


Justice, justice you shall pursue

by schiffty



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Children of Characters, Dramatic Irony, F/M, Galactic Road Trip, Redemption, Reylo Baby, Secret Identity, Serious Communication Issues, Space Navy, The Force, teenage angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-05 14:59:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15173186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schiffty/pseuds/schiffty
Summary: Months after Crait, a failed coup ended in Ben Solo defecting from the First Order and it tips the scales of the war in the Resistance's favor. But while awaiting trail, he vanished.Eighteen years later, the Republic has been restored yet all seven Knights of Ren are still at large, evading capture even with hefty bounties on their heads. However, when Poe Dameron is killed in a dogfight by a Force sensitive with a red lightsaber, his daughter might have an idea of where to start looking.





	1. Prologue

The Cosmic Force must like keeping Skywalkers on Tatooine because Ben has spent more time here than anywhere else. Two decades of exile - or was it just mere abandonment? - kept Ben Solo on his grandfather's and uncle's home world. Mostly alone, he lives in a typical Tatooinan home a few clicks out from a town, floundering in the ironic nature of his family's existence and fixing things for scraps of credits. He was once the Supreme Leader of the First Order and the Master of the Knights of Ren. Before that a Jedi and a son but now he's just Matt, a deserter from the First Order with a crooked nose. Ben's been Matt almost as long as he was Ben Solo, scion of the Skywalker legacy but he's still stuck here. 

The Force isn't what keeps him here, harvesting his own moisture and doing odd jobs around town with his lightsaber hidden under some junk. 

It was Rey. 

She told him to stay put. So he did. 

Ben hasn’t flown a ship since the Force Bond pulled at him as he made his escape from Hux's botched coup a few months after Crait. He couldn't even finish his question before Rey was spitting out her coordinates. The rest of the Resistance was less enthusiastic when he arrived scant hours later. 

However, his mother had welcomed him with open arms even after all those years and all those sins. But ever the pragmatist, the second she got the information she needed, Leia arranged for Rey to remove him from the situation until things settled and a new government could be formed to judge him properly. Although he was potential asset on and off the battle field, it wasn't the First Order that General Organa was concerned with as Hux had placed a bounty on Ben Solo's head, not Kylo Ren's, destroying a decade old alias with a few posters. 

Fratricide may be tragic possibility during war but that sentiment wouldn’t have been the consensus of the Resistance if Ben was shot in the back mid battle. Or they could’ve just shot him in his sleep. 

Therefore, his mother conspired with Rey to smuggle him out of his cell and to the opposite side of the galaxy. Safe, far away from the First Order. And the Resistance. 

On board the Falcon, smiling and out of breath, Rey asked where he wanted to go. Despite the fact that he had spent the better part of the last five years scouring the unchartered territories and obsessing over maps of the Outer Rim in search for Luke, he couldn't recall a single little-known planet besides the desert planets that had penchant for being tragic backstories of heroes. 

He said Tatooine as joke. But his years in the First Order and under Snoke's thumb must have made his sarcasm indistinguishable from his normal baritone because that's where Rey flew them. 

Rey stayed a couple of weeks with him to carve out a strategy for the war effort and for his new alias. Funded by his mother's untraceable credit stick, they bought a large compound with a storage bay just five clicks outside of Anchorhead. She fussed over his moisture collection system and lectured him on the importance of layers to shield him from the suns. Rey also rigged an older but stationary comm system with a specialized scrambling module and a direct connection to Rey and his mother in the deepest room of the typical, spherical Tatooinan home. The dark, cool room was originally designed to keep food and water but as soon as Rey left, he found himself sleeping on a bed roll down there, curled around the headset. 

When Rey left him on Tatooine the first time, the suns were setting she hugged him fiercely and whispered, “Next time, look for me in the sunset. I'll fly in low with the brighter sun behind me, so it will be harder to spot me as I land from the city.” 

“Don't want to give the locals any ideas.” 

“Yeah, any ideas that another life form would want you for company.” Rey pulled back and brushed a kiss against his cheek. “I'll be back soon.” 

Then she was gone for an entire month. But it was expected and he spoke to her nearly every day, if not through their bond then through the comm that acted more like a low-tech radio than a holopad. His mother also comm'd frequently, not bothering to hide behind Resistance business, trying to make up for lost time. Constantly nagging him about getting more sleep or tutting when he complained about his sunburn and reminding him that she loved and missed him. 

Until Rey returned, he focused on meditation, repairing cracks in the adobe, and converting the shack into more of a garage where he worked on his decaying speeder and could hide a smaller corvette. 

One evening, without forewarning, she returned just as she promised, flying low with the sunset at her back. At first it was just a dark spot blocking a sliver of a sun until it manifested to her running down the ramp to greet him. When she embraced him, it’s Ben who kisses her and this time it's on the mouth. 

Rey stayed as long as she could. Her trip’s official mission was to gather intel on some of the First Order's reconnaissance teams in the Outer Rim. It was a dead end that just happened to lead her a few parsecs from Tatooine. They split their time between sparring and slipping back inside the mostly empty house and into the bed he had finally assembled in the cellar with the comm. 

It was harder when she left after these developments but he kept busy and the Force never separated them for too long. Ben started taking jobs in town fixing the odd droid or speeder. It took a lot of meditation and continued breathing exercises but Ben settled into a rhythm of life in Tatooine. 

Rey came when she could. Sometimes, when the timing was right, she wouldn't comm ahead and would surprise him at dusk. Other times, he would stay up all night, pacing around his compound, anxious because Rey was late for her visit by two whole days. After his cover was solidified with the locals, she stopped waiting for the suns to rise or set and would even stop by Anchorhead to pick up lunch for them on her way in. But eventually the war, as wars always do, got in the way of things. 

The last time he saw Rey, she was with him for less than a day. Ben had lived on Tatooine for over a year. 

She was so giddy that even her Force signature burned different. Stronger with a hint of something else. 

The Resistance had the First Order on the ropes. Hux was finally dead and the schism that caused the failed coup was worsening as the chain of command crumbled. Troopers on remote bases were overthrowing their officers and offering First Order codes for asylum. Captains were surrendering entire Star Destroyers due to low munitions and fuel under threat of munity. 

“It’s the dawn of a new Republic,” Rey beamed, her hazel eyes shining in the sunlight. “Shouldn't be long until Leia brings you home.” 

The idea of returning unnerved him but he smiled, choking the thought before it could fully manifest, and kissed her. He didn't stop until they fell asleep, their bare limbs ensnared on his rickety mattress. 

Rey left with the sunrise and never returned. 

Two months later, he wasn't worried as Rey comm'd him nearly every day, an old friend dropped by for a visit while Ben was out on a job for the Hutt boss at the nearest space port, Mos Eisley. 

Hevron Ren must've used Ben's Force signature to track him to Tatooine. Maybe he couldn't track him to his exact location, or maybe because Hevron wanted to surprise him at home. A couple questions here and there with the locals led him to Ben's compound easily. Hevron had always been particularly gifted in reaching out to the force. And into people's minds. It's why the Resistance channels referred to him as the 'Monk' of the Knights of Ren. 

Ben's old classmate was less competent when it came to combat, as exemplified by his botched ambush as Ben parked his speeder in the garage when he returned from Mos Eisley. Within seconds, Ben had his lightsaber twirling between his fingers and Hevron knocked on his back, disarmed. 

"Lost?" Ben stilled with his lightsaber inches from Hevron's throat, pinning him in the sand, his saber's reflection glowing off Hervon's helmet. 

"Not as lost as you," Hevron huffed, reaching out a gloved hand. "The others think you're dead. You left us." 

He could feel Hevron probing his mind, aggressively grappling at the tendrils of Ben's consciousness. Ben tried to shut him out but once Hevron found what he was looking for he quickly withdrew. 

Hevron force pushed Ben into the wall while he was still reeling from the fog of the invasion and summoned his own saber. "...For a woman?" 

Groaning as he stood up, Ben gritted out, "That is none of your business." 

Hevron scoffed, "Just as it wasn't our business when that fight broke out at Skywalker's school?" The two men circled each other, sabers crackling in the night. "We gave you everything." 

"Everything you gave, you gave to Snoke freely." 

"We chose to stand against the other students to protect you. My brother...you said that the Knights will be your brothers from then on. But then you left us," he accused, his mechanical voice from the mask flatter than Ben's ever heard it. 

He didn’t want to kill him. Ben desperately didn’t want to kill the once goofy kid who would skip out on sparring to go study bugs in the forests of Yavin 4. So, he tried to give him an out, "And what do you plan to do about that?" 

"This is it, then? Fine. At least I'll return with something. My brothers will be interested in your direct line to the Resistance... and to the Jedi." 

Ben charged. The comm Rey had installed relied on its severely outdated tech to prevent interception but it would be a simple fix to use it to track the other ends of the closed system. 

Hevron didn't stand a chance in a melee. When the Knights of Ren would embark on missions, he almost never drew his blade, relying on his mind tricks and his brothers. In disarming Hevron, Ben made a deep cut in his upper arm, intending to sever it but Hevron summoned enough sand to nearly drown them both, it circled them like a sandstorm. He used the sand to conceal his escape to TIE fighter hidden on the far side of the garage. 

Hevron was already beginning the ignition sequence when Ben rounded the corner. The ship wasn't very large but it was too late and Ben's attempt to ground it with the Force only succeed in ripping the hyperdrive in two. Hevron couldn't leave the atmo but Ben couldn't let him get away with the comm. 

As a cornered animal, Hevron Ren fought savagely for weeks, denying Ben at every turn and slipping off into the desert and suppressing his force signature to cover his trail. But a desperate and disarmed dark sider left many confused, some minds were completely wiped, in his wake. In a final stand, Hevron resulted to old First Order tricks like taking a family of moisture farmers hostage. By the time Ben arrived, they were already dead or dying. Hevron mistakenly believed they were holding out on him – on escape routes or supplies or whatever a man dying of thirst hallucinates - and he let them die of thirst while he turned their minds to slop. 

When Ben ended the standoff, using the force to cut through Hervon's erratic blaster fire as Hevron’s connection with the Force was too weak to halt Ben in his tracks, he couldn't recognize his old friend that stood with him, against Luke, against his own brother, so many years before. Avsh of the Yis-1L system was gone long before Ben brought his blaster to his temple. 

He kept his saber hidden beneath his cloak, would've been to conspicuous. 

Hevron had kept the comm system throughout his entire plight and he made alterations in an attempt to contact with codes that Ben recognized to be the other Knights. But these sloppy attempts just corrupted the frequency hopping program that Rey had carefully set and Ben's only line to the Resistance was gone. 

Ben's speeder had fallen apart from lack of repair and constant use during his hunt for Hevron. A relative of the dead moisture farmers offered Ben a ride back to his compound and Ben got his first look at the wreck Hevron left in the early morning light. 

“Did he get your people, too?” The gruff man asked after seeing the disarray in the yard. 

“No. I live alone.” 

“I guess I do too, now. My brother was watchin’ my girl while I was off planet.” 

“Did your brother own the farm along Taltort Ridge?” 

The man nodded and averted his eyes, biting his scabbed lip until it bled. Not knowing what to do, Ben shook his hand and thanked him for the ride. The pilot squared his shoulders and returned to his ship. 

Ben had only been gone for sixteen days. Sixteen sunsets, thirty-two if you counted each sun. He had no comm set and the bond hadn't sprung to life since before Ben left to hunt Hevron. If somehow Hevron had made contact with the other Knights, it was only a matter of time until they came looking for him. Even if they couldn't track his force signature like Hevron could across the galaxy, they could still track him to his compound if they ever touched down on Tatooine. 

The first thing Ben did after the ship was out of sight was to find Hevron's abandoned lightsaber and throw along with his own in a tool drawer and bury them under unsalvageable parts in the back of the garage. He knew what he had to do, even without a comm link, he still had to do it. Cutting himself off from the Force would deny him Rey for just a little bit longer but it would also deny his Knights an avenue to hunt him down. 

Ben tried reaching across the bond one more time, hoping to warn Rey, but found her end was shut tight. 

He could wait, Ben had reasoned. Only a few more weeks, a month maybe, and she'd be back and they'll leave this gods-forsaken planet together. 

That was eighteen years ago. 

Whether she changed his mind about him or that this fate was sparing him from the executioner's block or this was what the judges ordered, it doesn't matter. He deserves this, intentional or not. 

When he was Kylo Ren, he never imagined being Ben Solo again but now that he is Matt, he's never felt more like Ben Solo in his entire life. Matt is a cloak he dons when he leaves for a job like space ship repair or helping run Anchorheard's townhall meetings in the morning and shirks it upon his return to practice copying aging manuscripts he found in the hills near where Luke grew up and pines for people who aren't there. 

After he killed Snoke, he told Rey to let the past die. The fact that she held on to hope for her parents over a decade after they sold her was inconceivable to him as Kylo Ren. But now, alone in the desert, Ben can empathize because it's all he has left. By now, he must've spent more time waiting for her than she did on Jakku for her parents. 

Tatooine was his uncle's and grandfather's home until the Force led them off planet and into the annals of galactic history. 

He has already marred the galaxy enough. He's cut himself from the Force. And so Tatooine is where he will stay.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to meet the protagonist: Elle Dameron, daughter, sister, friend and Space Cadet extraordinaire,

_36 ABY_

Rey lands as she usually does out back behind the garage with the twin sunsets at her back, Ben keeps promising to clean up the garage so she could have a proper landing pad but the more jobs he took, the more junk he got. At least he's adapting to desert life. 

She finds the darkness of the compound odd at this late in the evening and usually he is there to bound up the ramp in greeting. The past week or so, she hasn't been able to reach him over the comm so she's already on edge. Rey had brushed it off as the old tech being faulty but this excuse doesn't help now. Add in the complication she is here to talk about and Rey has a bad feeling about this. 

Taking a few tentative steps, she calls his name. 

When there is no answer, she runs down into the main sphere of the compound and finds a war zone in the kitchen with the faucet leaking, clay plates and bowls shattered against the far wall, and those fruits Ben enjoys from town are spoiled and spilled on the floor. When she reaches for the switch along the wall, the lights don't flick on. She searches for the emergency portions she purchased their first week here, portions are still something he's turned his nose up at and refused to touch them, and their disappearance is more than unsettling. 

Panicking, she lights her half of her saber to light her way, "Ben!" 

No answer again. So, she rushes down the narrow stairs to the cellar where Ben likes to sleep as the room isn't affected by the extreme temperatures of the desert, of course someone like Ben Solo would prioritize his own comfort over the shelf life of his food. The blue light reveals no Ben, just a bare bunk and the missing comm system. Dread is coursing through her body and she can't feel his Force Signature. 

"Ben!" 

Out in the court yard, she notices how much crap is thrown about. The little succulent collection, that she started and he added to whenever he made a trip to the far space port for work, by the dormitory section of the compound is scattered and their pots smashed, their soil drifting away in the breeze. Both ends of her saber are engaged now and she can't keep calling his name, tears threatening to fall. 

"Ben!" 

She investigates the garage but the only pieces of scrap metal and mechanical parts are there, Ben's meticulous sorting system was destroyed in this chaos. His speeder is gone and so are the fuel reserves he likes to keep on hand. Everything is wrong and so not Ben. 

Rey makes her way out of the garage to circle the perimeter when she finds it. 

"Ben." 

A damaged hyperdrive that's been cut clean in half sits on the opposite side of the garage from where she parked. Why does he have half a hyperdrive? Where is he? She knows he could easily fix it and- Rey cuts the thought and forces herself to breathe. 

She flies into town to find answers. 

"The last time I'd seen 'im was 'round the time that man in robes stopped by to ask after 'im a fortnight ago." The elderly grocer that makes Rey's favorite soup on Tatooine tells her as he packs up his goods for the day. 

"Robes? Black? With a black mask?" Rey asks, panic sinking further in her gut. 

"Yep. Fella also bought up near all my fuel too with a credit stick I never saw before. Didn't even carry it 'imself. Looked like he floated it or-" 

It's too much. Rey crouches over and retching into the bushes against the store front. 

The old man hovers over her, "You alright, missy?" 

"He's gone," Rey whispers, tears flowing freely. Taking his offered hand, she stands and says, "You'll forget you saw me tonight." 

"I'll forget I saw you tonight,” the old man parrots, dazed. 

Once she's on her ship and out of Tatooine's atmo, she calls Finn. While she waits for the holo to connect, she tries and fails to keep the sobs at bay. 

"Rey!" Finn's brilliant smile greets her, as happy as ever to see her. It melts away in a second just like everything else today, "Wait- what's wrong?" 

Biting her trembling lip, "Kylo Ren has defected." 

 

_____ 

 

_53 ABY_

_Class 54-02 Perihelion Assignments_

Elle scours the list for- and there! 

>   
>  _Dameron, L. - NRS Holdo_  
>  _Deltoid, T. - NRS Antilles_  
>  _El, S. - NRS Holdo_  
> 

"Kriff! El, we fucking got it!" 

"Looks like you'll be stuck with me all summer, Dameron," Seg proclaims, elbowing her harder than necessary. "Think we'll bunk together?" 

Elle rolls her eyes at him, "Like my dad would let me room with-" 

"A Jedi? I haven't taken my vow of chastity yet but your pops doesn't need to know that." Seg winks and she yanks his single, dumb, long braid. Religious exemption from hair standards, pfft. 

"No. A Jedi he would be fine with. But a second-rate cadet like you?" 

"Second only to you, according the merit list." Elle is first in their class and has been since her first year. Seg tested into the class a year ago after completing his basic Jedi training or some shit and that first term, he almost knocked her off of her pedestal. He would've if the Jedi Academy included aeronautical engineering and advanced calculus in its curriculum. According to Seg, the hard sciences are too worldly for the likes of the Jedi. 

But that Force stuff made him a better flyer than everyone else in their eighty-person class in their first non-simulated flights in the standard X Wing. Including her. He didn't need to think about calibrating thrusters when he could just feel them or whatever. 

Whatever it was, she wanted it. He needed help with the book stuff and, in exchange, he showed her how to tap into the special stuff that made him fly like a damn ace. It was just breathing and other stuff Elle didn't like to think about too much, Dad's never understood the Jedi either even if he counts the Grand Master among his best friends. They've been inseparable since.

Elle hums, "Think they'll have some real meat in the dining facility for end of term? Bantha burnt beyond recognition doesn't count" 

"Doesn't matter, all Star Cruisers get port time. Just wait two weeks and we can have a greasy kabob eating contest with more types of meat than you care to try," Seg promises as they make their way towards the chow hall. 

A perk of training with the Galaxy's last Jedi included lots of travel to exotic and distant systems for recruitment and goodwill. Elle was born on the Coruscant and stayed there until starting the Academy, where there are strict regulations against exploring Corellia. Something to do with the high density of crime and violence directly outside of the Academy's gates. 

The final ranks for the year are were published earlier in the day so all the cadets mulling outside the chow hall are a bit louder than usual. Cadets Second and First Class gossip about their Perihelion assignments and speculating about the First Class's impending permanent duty stations. First Classmen are only three months from joining the Republic 's Navy for real as Ensigns, as soon as they finish their tour and return for final examinations. The lower classmen, Fourth and Third class spend their summer at home. 

"Els!" Their classmate calls from the front of the line, a nickname that's followed Elle Dameron and Seg El throughout their friendship. "Excited for that flagship?" 

"You excited for that medical frigate that's docking on Chandrilla the entire break?" Elle shouts back. 

"Yeah, don't forget sunscreen, Meret. You'll need it for when they have you out running for caf." A couple of Fourthies giggle. Kriffing fourteen-year olds. Inflating Seg's ego even more. "Hey, I'm actually going to go comm my dad before chow." 

"Tell him I like my eggs scrambled. Oh! And ask if I can carry my lightsaber for the tour!" 

"Of course, cadet," she calls as she brushes through the throng of hungry teenagers. 

Once in her barracks, she fires up her holopad. Her dad picks up immediately. 

"Sweetheart!" Her dad's smiling face greets her. "How's camp?" An inside joke, he didn't send her to the Corellian Flight Academy, or CFA, just to an extended summer camp for the past three years. 

"We got our assignments today." Elle wrenches her hands, close to just shouting it. The upperclassmen at CFA spend their Perihelion Breaks getting a feel of Naval life by apprenticing on ships across the Republican Fleet. 

"And? You'll be spending the Corellian Summer where? Datooine?" 

"Shut up. I've been assigned to the _Holdo_ -" 

Admiral Poe Dameron, who is probably in between briefings with the highest-ranking officers in the Republic's defense force, shrieks with joy. "I fucking knew it! I knew you put the _Holdo_ as your top choice." 

"Of course, Dad, but I didn't know if I would get it-" 

"Don't be bashful, kid. You're the best in your year. And before you bother, I know they keep the damned ranking calculations quiet but I don't need numbers to know my daughter is the best pilot in that school. I knew you'd get your top choice, you just kept it a secret." 

Elle accepts this praise with a large smile, "Seg also will-" 

"Aw, don't tell me that my CFA tour with my daughter is going to be ruined by your Jedi boyfriend. I knew it was a mistake helping that kid get special accommodations." Poe helped Seg jump into her class instead of starting as a Fourth Class Cadet due to his age, as most humanoids start at fourteen. Seg showed up to the CFA at sixteen after an influx of students at the Jedi Temple and Master Rey refused to grant him the rank of Jedi Knight also, once again due to age. Instead of being stuck doing archive work and help teaching adults how to kriffing breath, Seg begged to attend flight school. A call to her dad and Seg was given a special test and placed in her class section. 

"He's not my boyfriend!" 

"And Kaydel is just my old war buddy." Elle snorts. Kaydel is her stepmom and has been staple in her life in her life since Dad married her when Elle was little. She lives on Coruscant with Elle's brothers and sister. Dad spends all his planet side time there and Elle joins them during the Festival season. 

"How's Kes doing in school?" Elle asks while twirling some fly-away strands from her bun. 

"Still the same. May not get onto to the fast track to be a fighter pilot like his big sister. Avi still hates space travel and I think Bea might be better cut out for the army. Keeps on fighting the other toddlers. So, you're my only hope." 

Something pings in the background on her dad's side, "Hey," he holds up a finger and checks something off screen, "I've got to go. Need to finish up some details for our mission for this training rotation. I'll send you some declassed details as soon as I can. Consider it an award for being so great." 

"Love you, Dad." 

"Love you, too, Little Leia." 

 

______ 

 

_The United Republic Ship Holdo will clear and secure any and all strongholds under the Olim Syndicate's control in the Taros system in order to disrupt and prevent the illegal lifeform trafficking from the Outer Rim and deny them a foothold into the Mid Rim._

 

_______ 

 

It was supposed to be a ground mission. That's what all the intel pointed to. It's why they had to cede flight deck space normally reserved for fighters to the landing and medic vehicles. Their escort battle cruisers where scarcely manned to put more boots on the ground for their assault and the _Holdo's_ power was not redirected to reinforce their shields. 

The plan of action was a major ground assault with light covering fire from the _Holdo_ and a quick reaction force of X Wings led by Admiral Dameron himself, ready to swoop in and save the mission if needs be. 

They were here to save lives from the slavers that raid the Outer Rim for sex or cheap labor. A controlled ground assault would minimize the casualties of the victims of the sleaze that is the Olim Syndicate. 

Supposed to be an easy mission. Get in, kill the bad guys, extract the victims, and secure the area. 

But their intel never mentioned that they had fucking military grade defense systems. That was a surprise that downed their first three landing parties. To make everything worse, Olim's flight capabilities was well beyond the means of a normal slaver gang. They had kriffing TIEs. More First Order-esque TIE Silencers than they had X Wings fielded. 

Cadet Second Class Leia "Elle" Dameron watched the disaster that would be remembered as the Battle of Taros unfold from the bridge. 

 

________ 

 

"Where the fuck are you going?" Seg snarls as he tries to catch her by the shoulders on her exit of the bridge. 

"AR-670, on me," she calls to an astromech droid. 

"Elle!" 

She keeps going, making a beeline for her destination.

"For Maker's sake! You can't leave the bridge when we- It's fucking protocol, Ellie!" 

The involvement permitted of cadets during altercations is clear: none is allowed. Report to bridge. Wait for the CFA liaison to give further instructions, usually being evacuation orders even in the smallest of skirmishes. Certainly, don't steal a fighter to go provide support to your father. 

Seg doesn't stop but nor does she and when they're in the flight bay, he is yelling at her, "You can't do this. You aren't licensed, you don't even have a flight suit!" He sounds like he's begging. "There's only one X Wing left, shouldn't we just wait until-" 

"No time," she shouts as she jumps into the cockpit with AR-670 installing itself in the rear. The last thing she sees on the ship is Seg's torn face in the reflection of the canopy as it slams shut. 

Elle steers the ship out of the bay and into the fray. Her father's QRF is already struggling against the gang's fighters, lost two or three of the twelve fighter squadron. As soon as Elle engages her first target, a TIE getting too close to another X Wing, her comm comes to life. 

"Black 13, this is Black Leader, what in kriffing hell are you doing out here?" It's her dad, sounding terser than she's ever heard him before. 

The TIE she's been chasing breaks, relieving the pressure on an already sparking X Wing, and she moves on to another TIE, making quick work of it. Another X Wing goes down too. When she finds her voice, "Black Leader, this is Black 13, just trying to lend a hand." 

"Elle?" She can hear the shock his voice, "Get back to the -" 

The transmission is cut off abruptly with a horrific metallic hiss. Elle freezes, heart racing, refusing to look over her shoulder. It can't be- 

Another voice comes to life on the comm, "Black Leader down. I say again, Black Leader down." 

She refuses to watch her father's ship burn. But she feels it. It's just like Seg described to her when his mother died while he was halfway across the Galaxy with the Jedi. Like your entire body is numbed except for the gaping hole that's replaced where your heart was. The Force knows it has them and it doesn't want you to miss it even if you can't be there to watch. 

Then everything she feels is in hyperdrive. The nausea, the pain, and the twitch in her thumb that hovers over the firing mechanism. Two more X Wings go down. She knows how many X Wings they have left and their conditions. She knows it's not enough and the battle cruisers can't provide any sort of fire at this close of a range with so many friendlies near. 

"This is Black 13, all units staggered formation on me." 

The reply is only compliance 

Her ship jumps out of the fray for a moment and the stragglers follow, forming behind her. Elle leads them in a 180 and they easily out maneuver the older and stiffer TIEs. TIEs always had better fire power but X Wings were favored by rebels for a reason, because they needed the speed and maneuverability. 

"This is Black 13, on my count cut engines and return to the to the Holdo." She has them slowly dipping into Taros 2's atmo at a high speed, far away from Olim's artillery. The remaining TIEs aren't too far behind, struggling to keep up. "Now!" 

The meager squadron disappears behind but the TIEs keep on her. 

Another 180 maneuver readjusts her course towards the Olim base. 

They are still firing on the fleet and now the Republic's battle cruisers are finally answering with their own cannons. This is the maelstrom she tries to lead the dozen or so remaining TIEs through. It's hard to see going this fast, so close to a planet's surface, it makes the rounds of fire look like blurs. And her trick works. Only a couple TIEs bail as she makes a run at their base, dropping bombs on as many artillery pieces as she could. 

Elle doesn’t know how her spacecraft survived the heavy crossfire but she does. Her eyes are shut as she dodges every round before they are even fired. Just like Seg told her, _Reach out_. The illumination of the fire fight is blinding, bright flashes leaking through her eye lids. 

She is the only ship that makes it through and by the time she slows down to make another 180 back to the base, two TIEs catch up with her. She comes out of her turn and lines herself up perfectly with the first one, slowing down so she wouldn't crash into it. 

It only took a couple bursts of laser to break it and as she was making her turn to focus on the last TIE, she saw something. There was a bright red laser sticking out of the canopy of the crashing tie. Half a breath later, a chute was out and the hulking pilot was floating towards the surface with a lightsaber in their hand. 

She should've been paying attention to the other fighter because her fixation on the lightsaber only ended when her engine started to spark. AR is screeching for her to land in binary, the engine is on fire and she can barely keep the damn thing level but she finds a clearing, leans in, trying to touch down gently and then- 

It's black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, unbeta'd. Fight me. Like actually tho. Comments are welcome to bash my grammar and ever-lasting battle with commas.
> 
> CFA is a made up academy that I set up to be like American military academies, except you start at 14, not 18. The class systems start, counter intuitively, with the Fourth Class, then Third then so on. 
> 
> I have some time in the Army, not the Air Force or Navy so I have very little real world knowledge how dog fights work and military genre bores me. Let me know if anything is confusing with the terminology. 
> 
> I have the first five chapters written but I am updating as I solidify where the plot is going.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Confirmation of parentage, a funeral, and grief fueled bad decisions.

_ABY 37_

 

It's the first time Rey's been to Coruscant since the Accords, since Tatooine and everything after. It took every modicum of discipline to sit through a litany of meetings and speeches welcoming her back to the Republic's reestablished capital. The Senate is over eager to celebrate the return of their wayward Jedi's return after spending over a year...away. It's understandable with what transpired with their previous Last Jedi.

 

It's why she grinned her way through hundreds of handshakes, maybe she'll insist on bowing to seem more devout and to save her poor knuckles from the abuse of over enthusiastic Senators and government officials, and a press conference.

 

The conference was more draining than she ever imagined. During the war, Rey wasn't expected to have an opinion or have to delve into her personal life for the public's consumption. But the bright flashes were blinding and insatiable reporters wanted to dredge up the minute details of her life, from Jakku to her public disappearance shortly after the Accords. They were quick to jump to the conclusion that her disappearance was a spiritual journey as the beginning to a rebuilt Jedi Order and they were already inquiring about her students and new school. Of which, she had neither.

 

To be missing from the public eye for so long and then return without seemed nigh on treason with how exasperated the poor reporters reacted. Rey knows they are just trying to put Bantha on the table but she was more than thankful when Leia cut the conference short.

 

After a quick dinner with her friends from the Resistance, Poe drives her to his home that he rents from the General Leia. The Organa's had owned the property since before the rise of the Empire and Leia spends most of her time at the Senate, doing what she always does, protecting democracy. Poe mentioned the general had a flat closer to the Senate where she spends most of her nights after burning the midnight oil.

 

As soon as Poe parks the speeder, Rey is hopping our impatiently and follows him inside a house which is larger than most large classed freighters. It’s a small palace. It's certainly more than a step up from her AT-AT that Rey spent her childhood in.

 

The service droids beep in greeting as Poe leads her to the baby's nursery. The room is painted a soft pink with a large red Starbird centered above the crib. The crib's occupant is fast asleep, unperturbed by Rey's erratic heartbeat or the hitch in her breath. Rey has been dreaming about this moment for eight months. It took a spiritual pilgrimage to temple after temple to attempt to distract her from whom she entrusted to Poe eight months ago.

 

"She's asleep, but don't worry, she'll be up in a few hours for a feeding," Poe whispers while Rey admires the infant girl with her tuffs of curly dark hair and a blankie stuffed into her small mouth.

 

Tears pool in her eyes and Rey nods, not daring to look away from her daughter's face. She needs to make up for the lost time, to memorize her little girl's face. Rey had always wondered why her parents had left her. When she was younger, it was easier to write it off a necessity, to protect her or give her a better life but she always believed they’d be back once they had their affairs in order, being left behind was always temporary. It couldn't be further from the truth. But since she was born, Rey finds herself using that excuse again and it's pitiful. It's the one she's been feeding herself every day since Rey left her with Poe and it leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.

 

"Can I help?" Rey's voice comes out half an octave higher than normal.

 

"Of course, I'll show you how to warm her milk. The nanny droid is a godsend..."

 

Afterwards, Poe shows her the spare room adjacent to the nursery and she falls into a fitful sleep. When the baby screams awake hours later, Rey is there in an instant. With shaking arms, she picks up her daughter for only the third time in baby's short life and holds her close. The first being immediately after her birth and the second when Poe handed her back for a goodbye the next day.

 

The Jedi believed attachment was dangerous. This is not the first instance Rey had agreed with that sentiment since Crait. But this attachment wouldn't hurt her as a Jedi, no she's only felt more resolve to rebuild the Jedi Order and continue her training since giving birth to her daughter. However, being Rey's daughter would only bring heartache and put a target on the girl's back especially with her father-

 

Rey rocks her daughter, so much bigger than all those months ago, as she preps the synthmilk in the specialized warmer in the kitchen. The wails continue and she tries cooing and bouncing the infant. Her ministrations don't work and Rey tentatively tries reaching out in the Force, like Leia had done earlier today at the press conference after a particularly invasive and rude question and many times throughout the years, with a gentle caress of the baby's mind.

 

The baby's cries quiet as Rey continues to send simple emotions through their temporary connection, like protection, warmth and love. Once the milk is ready, Rey situates them on the sofa and offers the bottle which her daughter readily receives. She no longer can fathom how she had stayed away for so long.  How she spent months trying to forget how there is piece of her out there in the galaxy, without her.

 

When the front door opens, Rey's little girl opens her eyes wide, different than the clouded blue she had the last time Rey held her. Rey is in such a state of shock at the sight of them, she forgets that someone had just entered the home. For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, she is staring into Ben Solo's expressive eyes.

 

Rey is openly sobbing when Leia calls her name, "Rey."

 

She feels like she's been caught red handed, she can't do this. She can't look Leia in the eye, where Ben Solo got his pair of pretty eyes, and lie. Not now, with her perfect daughter looking up with her like she's the only good thing in the galaxy.

 

" _Oh,_ Rey." The General rounds the sofa and pulls her arms around Rey and the baby.

 

Leia knows, Rey can feel it. All these months Poe peddling the lie about a munitions supplier he has tryst with towards the end of the war are for naught. All the planning that went into Rey's birth and the alibis carefully set place to hide the infant's true parentage from the galaxy could never fool Leia Organa. Rey already lost Leia's only son and now she's been denying Leia her grandchild.

 

"I'm so sorry, Leia," Rey chokes out.

 

"There's nothing to be sorry about," the old general tuts, her hand brushing a tear away from Rey's cheek. Leia allows Rey to cry in her arms for an age until the infant between them starts squirming.

 

"May I?" Leia motions to her granddaughter. Rey obliges immediately, "This one likes to be burped as soon as she finishes her feeding, isn't that right, Ellie?"

 

Rey's wipes her face and her ears perk up, "Ellie?"

 

Leia is bouncing the baby against her shoulder, rubbing her back, "Just a little nickname. It's an honor, dear, but running around with two Leia's in the house can be quite confusing."

 

Rey's lips quiver, of course Poe named his adopted daughter after his adoptive mother.

 

"You didn't know,” Leia raises an eyebrow in disbelief.

 

Rey shakes her head, "The idea was that it would be more convincing if Poe chose her name. But I'm glad he chose it, it's perfect." Ellie makes a gurgling sound and Leia seems satisfied and returns her to Rey's eager arms. "She's perfect."

 

"She has Ben's eyes. But not his nose, thank the maker." Leia says with a distant look.

 

"Leia-" Rey starts.

 

"I understand why," Leia interrupts softy, "Not that I completely agree. I had wonderful parents that provided a loving and safe childhood, safe from the shadow of Vader. And if this is what you think you have to do to protect her, then do it. Just don't make the same mistake as I did."

 

Rey waits expectantly and Ellie starts to fidget, now content to play with her hair.

 

"Promise me that you'll tell her the truth when it's time. I never told Ben about his heritage and the galaxy is a worse place for it. Promise me, Rey."

 

Rey looks down at Ellie with her big brown eyes and gummy smile, smoothing her curly locks, "I promise."

 

_________

_ABY 53_

 

The opposite of darkness is the fucking blinding, artificial light that they use in comatose patient rooms on the medical frigate _Mercy_. The irony is not lost on Elle as she blinks awake from the worst sleep she's ever had. For a split moment, she almost forgets everything that happened in haze of sleep and drugs but when a medic, the CFA liaison, and her father's second in command enter the room, it's like it’s happening all over again.

 

_Black Leader down. I say again-_

 

"It's good to see you awake, Leia." Vice Admiral Terrin greets her.

 

Elle desperately wants to curl into a ball and ignore him as she was wont to do as a shy, little girl when her father would invite his coworkers over for a caf after dinner. But she's seventeen and a cadet at the Academy, besides.

 

"Gentlemen, ma'am." Elle's throat is dry and she forces herself to look them in the eye. Terrin is a military man and has- _had_ worked with her father since the war. He came up as a navigator, not a pilot.

 

"I'm sorry for your loss." Terrin sincerely starts and Leia can't look at him anymore, her eyes welling with tears. "Your father built the Republic's entire defense force from scratch."

 

Not just scratch, just from a damned YT Corellian Freighter with less than thirty soldiers, Elle thinks harshly.

 

"He will be missed and I promise we will respect your need to mourn but we have a few things to discuss that I do not wish to put off." Elle did steal an X Wing and disobeyed protocol during combat, the two worst things a cadet could do on their Perihelion assignment bar from murdering the commanding officer. Does distracting your commanding officer to the point they are shot out of space count?

 

The CFA liaison for this fleet assignment, Captain Iyer, is a tall Twi'Iek woman who Elle had only interacted as a substitute teacher at school. She's a force to be reckoned with and is on staff to assist with the remedial First Classmen for a reason.

 

"The Academy recognizes your valor and cunning in battle," Captain Iyer says with steel in her voice, "but, after a lengthy discussion with the Board, it has been decided that you will not be returning for you final year."

 

Elle stares at the captain, her eyes dry instantly, and wishes she could care. Her father-

 

"Gods, Iyer, you sound like we decided to court martial the poor girl." Terrin snaps. "You're not returning to the Academy, that's correct. But you will not be punished, not after you turned a losing hand into a victory. You are to be granted the rank of Ensign as field commission and report to the Citadel on Coruscant, after your wounds heal of course, to await your permanent assignment."

 

Elle has even less of a reaction to that. So, she sits there, gapping at them.

 

"We also put you in for a few awards," Captain Iyer adds, belatedly trying to soften the blow.

 

She killed her own _father_ and they want to kriffing pin a medal to her chest and-

 

"When's the funeral?" She demands, pissed that they think a promotion is more pertinent than her own father's funeral.

 

"A state funeral is planned on Coruscant in a week. We will be arriving a day or two prior, after our repairs are finished," Terrin promises. "We're now docked until we can make the jump to hyperspeed."

 

"You should be on your feet by then," the medic promise, speaking for the first time. "We just took you out of the bacta tank but you're not out of the Endor forests yet. How are you feeling?"

 

Elle ignores him, "What happened to the mission?"

 

"It was a success, after you neutralized a large portion of their defense systems, we were able to get ground crews in there and rescue the trafficking victims, fewer casualties than we could've hoped, all considered. Most of Olim's operatives either died or escaped. Save a pilot that you shot down in Taros's atmo. He's in a holding cell aboard the _Holdo_."

 

It must be the Force user. With the lightsaber. She didn't shoot down anyone else once in Taros 2's atmo.

 

"Sir, the ensign should be resting," she hears the medic inform Terrin.

 

"No!" Elle shouts with more force than intended. "You can't put him in a normal cell. Sir, he's a Force user. I saw him! He used a lightsaber to escape his TIE. I saw it!"

 

Terrin looks at her like she is a little girl in her father's living room and she just knocked over tray of caf on his boots. Captain Ilyer spares an incredulous glance to the admiral.

 

"Get some Force restricting handcuffs or something! Please!" When they just continue their furtive glances, she begs, "You can't let one of the men who killed my father go just because you weren't thorough."

 

Terrin hushes her, and she's just a child – _a fatherless child_ \- again and she hates it, and promises to look into it. Then they file out after the medic fiddles with one of her three machines and she's relieved from the torture that is the _Mercy'_ s lighting and the pressing guilt that's settled on her chest.

 

__________

 

The repairs take longer than expected and they arrive on Coruscant the day of Elle's father's funeral. She supposes it's a blessing as she is still struggling with the most basic of tasks and it puts off having to explain herself. The only company she had all week were the medics running in and out, busy with a full patient load, there were a lot more trafficking victims than intel had indicated. Another thing they got wrong.

 

The entire week she spent cooped in her med cot, scouring the holonet for information about the Knights of Ren. She has dozens of unanswered hails from classmates, mostly from Seg, and her family. Elle barely had enough energy to stay awake for more than a couple of hours at a time and she spent her waking hours buried in her research, trying to tie the Knights of Ren to the Olim Syndicate. There are rumored sightings for the past decade but only one semi-credible lead claims a death.

 

But when the fleet docked earlier this morning, Seg was evidently tired of being ignored. Armed with her new dress uniform that the Citadel had put together ahead of the fleet’s arrival, Seg stormed into her quarters the moments the anchors were in place on the _Mercy_. She pretended to be asleep. Seg didn't call out her bluff and just settled down in the seat next to her bed.

 

She's still pretending to sleep. Maybe she can keep it up all day.

 

Then there is the loud buzz of a zipper from the garment bag and Seg lets out a gasp of surprise, "Oh hells, they gave you Blood Stripes."

 

Elle sits up at that, "They're red."

 

Seg thumbs the red stripes, "You did make a bombing run through the crossfire of two battle cruisers, a star cruiser, and a fuck ton of enemy artillery. After sacrificing yourself so the rest of the squad could return to the ship. "

 

Blood Stripes are specifically a Corellian award, awarded for intentional daring in battle. There are two classes, second class is signified by yellow piping along the seams of your trousers. First class is red and is almost always awarded posthumously.

 

"Big deal, Han Solo had both classes," Elle says, trying to shrug it off as her guilt washes over. If she so much as clears her throat, her raw emotion will spill over and she won't make it to the ceremony.

 

"Elle, you have to get ready. We were supposed to be there an hour ago. Your stepmom has been hailing me-"

 

Elle bites her lip and nods. She tries to stand up but her legs buckle like a newborn Bantha's. Seg catches her quickly. "Help me?" She asks.

 

He blinks slowly and rests his forehead against hers gently, "Always."

 

It's not easy to get her limbs through the right holes and she's never been this unclothed and close with another person, not counting the medics, in her life. But with her face blazing, they manage and Seg finishes by buttoning the cuffs and tucking her service tie under the first button of the shirt.

 

"Hey, doc said to remind you about your blood supplements, to double the dosage because you'll be walking more today," Seg says.

 

"Too easy, El.”

 

________

 

The state funeral of Admiral Poe Dameron was attended by thousands, dignitaries, a large portion of the brass and admiralty, the entirety of the Senate, many citizens of the Coursant, and his close friends and family.

 

The liturgy went on for hours, eulogies by professional acquaintances and old friends hogged the pulpit. Admiral Dameron's widow, Kaydel Ko Connix declined to speak, begging off to sit with her three young children in the front, center row. Nor did his eldest daughter, Ensign Leia Dameron, as she was still recovering from her battle wounds. She stood with the crew of the _Holdo_ off to the side, next to Vice Admiral Terrin with the assistance of Cadet Seg El.

 

There was no body to be put to rest as he was lost in space, therefore, according to Republican Naval Custom, his dress uniform was cremated in his stead. The last eulogy was given by Leia Organa, the admiral's mentor, close confidant, and namesake for his eldest child.  The old general's solemn and impassioned vernation of Admiral Dameron concluded the ceremony as Ensign Dameron lit the pyre with the aid of Cadet El.

 

As the empty wooden coffin caught flame, the junior officer collapsed into the cadet's arms sobbing.

 

________

 

After everything, after a painful reunion with her stepmother, brothers, and sister and the funeral, Elle gets pulled aside at the beginning of the reception by grim faced Terrin.

 

"I just received word, it seems our Olim guest, Silus, escaped from his holding cell during the funeral."

 

"Even with Force inhibiting handcuffs, sir?"

 

"I never ordered the cuffs. I had Taros searched, thoroughly, and no lightsaber was found anywhere near his crash site," Terrin states calmly.

 

"What!" Elle shouts, forgetting any decorum. "You kriffing let him go! You can't just let a Force-"

 

"There still is no evidence of him being a Force user," Terrin grits out. "I can't just order cuffs on an unconfirmed individual; do you know the type of impact those have on non-Force sensitives? It's cruel."

 

"I confirmed it for you, _sir_ ," she snaps.

 

"You had half a foot in the grave in addition to being emotionally compromised. I ordered the search but we found nothing. And just because this criminal scum has friends on Coruscant doesn't mean he magicked his way off planet."  Terrin takes in a dramatic breath, "Collect your bearing, Dameron. We may at your father's funeral but you're still an officer in the Republican Navy and I am your superior officer. I can take only so much insubordination in a sitting."

 

"But sir, we're standing," Elle states childishly, jutting out her chin.

 

"Enough." He says lowly, "You will conduct yourself in a manner befitting of your rank or you'll spend your career as a logistics officer in the Outer Rim."

 

"Sir, if you would allow me," Elle tries to switch gears, "I haves some intel that may lead us to-"

 

"Us? The matter is out of our hands, certainly out of yours."

 

"What?" The thought never occurred to her, of course she was going to hunt down the Olim's Syndicate. They killed her father. And the majority of his squadron. Not to mention how many lives they've ruined with their slave trade.

 

"The Citadel is considering a more covert course of action than planetary invasion. And if your hypothesis is correct, then it would be in the Jedis' hands anyway."

 

"You're trusting thirty mediocre Force users with laser swords hunt down the fucking Knights of Ren? That's the Citadel's kriffing brilliant plan?" Elle explodes.

 

"I said if-"

 

"You're fucking delusional if you think those-"

 

"Dameron." Terrin warns, finality in his voice.

 

"You know what? Go fuck yourself, Terrin." Elle reaches for her metal ranks that Seg helped pin on her shoulders and rips them off, one after the other. "Keep these. I don't fucking need your damned commission. I'll find those bastards myself." And she chucks them in his face, hard, leaving him shocked and steaming. "Consider it my resignation."

 

She storms off, away from the wake, and dodges the well-wishers on her way to the exit of the Senate building, where the reception is being held. Elle almost makes it out until Seg interrupts her escape. He takes one knowing look at her bare shoulders as he calls out to her.

 

"Dameron, what did you?"

 

"Fuck Terrin," she bites. "I warned him about kriffing Silus being a Force user."

 

"What?"

 

"The prisoner on the _Holdo_! El, he had a goddamn lightsaber. Red. Like the Knights of Ren." Elle's heart is beating at 10 lightyears per hour. "I saw it! And he escaped."

 

" _What_?"

 

"The Knights of Ren! They disappeared after the war. But we found them! They work with, I don't know maybe even run, the Olim Syndicate."

 

"Elle, more than just the Knights of Ren had red lightsabers. The Sith used them for thousands of years. And, anyone can use a lightsaber. It's just a weapon, like a blaster. I even let your father wield mine once."

 

"But not pilots with the reaction time to avoid that crossfire. You've seen the clips, haven't you?" Elle asks, begging for him to believe her, "Only two bailed in time."

 

"Elle, have you been taking your meds? You look a little pale."

 

He's not listening to her. Seg isn't listening to her, she needs his help and he's just trying to placate her like the medics and fucking Terrin.

 

"Elle?" Seg prompts and she's made her decision.

 

"I'm going to head back to the _Mercy_ , I'm already out of blood supplements." It's not a lie, she forgot to bring enough but remembered to double the dosage, and she finished them before the ceremony was even over.

 

Seg looks at her warily, "I'll come with you. Master Rey needs to speak with you, anyway, and you keep running off."

 

"I'll be fine, Seg. I need the fresh air anyway." She can see that his resolve is only hardened at this, there is objectively no fresh air on Coruscant. "Please? I need you to go find Kaydel and tell her that I'll be right back. You know how she worries, Seg." Elle cajoles.

 

"Ok," it works and Seg pulls her into a hug that's usually reserved before Festival break at the Academy. "I'll meet you back here in 20?"

 

Elle nods and he brushes the briefest kiss on her forehead which isn’t usually reserved for anything. It's new. She almost falters and ask him to come with but her throat is too dry to get words out.  

 

"Stay out of trouble, Dameron."

 

_________

 

The shipyard where the fleet is docked is crawling with enforcers, cordoning off the area in their search for Silus. Elle was going to steal an X Wing, the ship she's most familiar with, from off the _Holdo_. One of the more broken ones from battle, they Navy wouldn’t have missed it much. But with the extra security, it's not possible.

 

She tries sneaking onto the _Holdo_ but has to duck into the private space port adjacent to the yard to avoid a security team. Can't quit the Navy and get arrested for trespassing in the same day, she decides. Hiding behind a pillar, waiting for the team to pass, she spots the _Millennium Falcon_. And it's like her dad is blessing off on her suicide mission.

 

She knows the _Falcon_ , she knows the ignition sequence and how the right stick gets a little sticky in hyperspace. Rey would take her out for quick jaunts during the Jedi Master's visits to the Coruscant. Last Festival Season, Rey gave her a ride home and she and Seg flew the entire way to the capital, with Rey only supervising.

 

It's too fucking easy.

 

So, she steals it, ignoring the space port's hails to check out with customs. And no one tries to stop her as she exits the Coruscant's atmo and starts punching in the coordinates to Tatooine.

 

Elle will find the Knights of Ren, even if she has to start by finding a dead one.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back to the fic, guys. Thank you for taking the time to read. 
> 
> I never tried to hide Elle's real, I prefer biological because Poe is her real dad, parentage but it didn't fit anywhere in the prologue or the first chapter so there you go.
> 
> This project is mostly about making myself happy but let me know if it makes you happy too. Or if it does the opposite. 
> 
> I'll try to reference all my EU stuff:  
> [Corellian Blood Stripe](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Corellian_Bloodstripe)
> 
> Terrin and Iyer are made up? Also shameless stealing Seg's name from Seg El, Superman's pop-pop, which in itself is a play on Jerry Siegel's surname (Superman's creator).
> 
> Also, like I did a real dumb and elaborate thing with the Knights of Ren's names so if you guess any of the references..I'll send you pictures of my cat in a tux? Olim Syndicate is a reference to Milo's Syndicate in Catch 22 where he steals stuff like parachutes and leaves coupons in their place. Sounds bad but like Olim's gang are slavers?
> 
> Cheers!


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fallout of not taking your meds. Also, the fallout for being a desert hermit.

_ 53 ABY Coruscant  _

 

The past week has been Rey’s most stressful since Elle was born. The near two decades of galactic peace had lulled Rey into a false sense of security in regards to her daughter. She did fret a bit when Elle left the safety of her upper-class neighborhood on Coruscant for the flight academy instead of her temple as Rey had always imagined. But it was just a boarding school, so Rey's fears soon abated.

 

Then the disaster in the Taros system happened and her nightmare almost became reality. 

 

When she felt Elle's sorrow ripple throughout the galaxy, Rey knew Poe was dead. Poe who was Elle's absolutely favorite person from the moment she was placed in his arms. Poe, the rash but brilliant pilot and commander, who fought against the First Order when the odds were so impossible that it was a freighter full of people versus the largest military the galaxy had seen since the Empire. A loving husband, compassionate friend, and a dedicated father of four, the youngest only five years old.

 

Rey was already preparing the temple for her absence and the  _ Falcon _ for takeoff when the slow drum of loss dissipated and Rey's own panic took its place as she failed to find her daughter in the Force. Rey doesn't remember much from that day in besides Seg ignoring her hails and a conversation with the Citadel who didn't have information yet. 

 

She was already on Coruscant when Seg finally returned her calls and assured her of his health. Her padawan had the same look in his eye every time his master asked too much about his academy friend but Rey couldn't shy away like the times before. Seg told her what happened to Elle. A suicide mission to avenge her only parent. At least, of which she's aware. Elle did always want to be just like Poe was Rey's emotionally exhausted reaction.

 

Poe and Rey butted heads about when to tell Elle about her true parentage but they both agreed that it was never the time. It's now possibly the worst time, to double down on the loss, to tell a girl that her deceased father wasn't even her father. But she's 17 and a newly minted officer is the navy which makes the issue more pressing. Rey doesn't want her to start her adult life ignorant of the truth.

 

Poe's funeral was well attended. Rey sat next to the family, expecting Elle to be there. Holding Bea, the youngest Dameron, Rey watched Elle struggle to stay upright in her Navy blues with the crew of Poe's ship. The stark red stripes along the pant legs did not escape Rey's notice and she now knows whatever Elle did, it's worse than what Seg watered it down to.

 

Rey was the first speaker but kept it short, noting Poe as a man that would drop everything for a friend or for peace in the Galaxy. "May the Force be with you" echoed through the hall once she finished. Finn and a handful of other Resistance members spoke but the speakers soon blurred into less familiar faces and politicians. Leia brought the funeral to an close with the grace only a lifetime of loss and soldiering could have forged.

 

The reception, in theory, is supposed to be a more intimate affair yet it is still packed with state officials and Rey cannot find Elle in the throng of people. At the beginning, Rey caught a glimpse of Elle walking off with some Navy officer but she never returned. Earlier Rey had given Seg orders to bring Elle to her. Orders he evidently ignored.

 

Seg isn't very tall, just slightly taller than Rey but looks shorter when he slouches like he is now, and keeps his straight dark hair closely cropped, except for his Padawan braid. His monolid eyes refusing to meet hers when he returns, "Master Rey, Elle said she was just going to pick up-"

 

Rey's comm interrupts him, blinking a hail from Coruscant customs of all things.  She answers it immediately, suspicious at Seg's widening eyes. 

 

"Master Jedi, this is Officer Pobden at Customs on Dock 273-C. Sorry to interrupt you, ma'am, but your ship left without checking out with us."

 

Rey feels Seg's immediate apprehension and shares it, "I haven't left Coruscant, officer. I’m still planetside."

 

"Oh. Someone successfully completed the ignition sequence of your ship and left-"

 

"Who did?" It takes everything for Rey to sound composed.

 

At Officer Pobden's lack of a straight answer and promises to look at the security footage just infuriates her, "Never mind, I'll deal with it myself." 

 

It's Elle. There are only a handful of people she's shown the ignition sequence to since she changed it last year, and one is dead, another looking at her guiltily, the couple of her students that she's promoted to the rank of master and are busy running the Temple in her absence, and Elle.

 

"We'll register it as a missing vehicle, ma'am."

 

"No!" Rey says too quickly. "This is Jedi business." Per usual, the common Republic citizen takes that statement deathly seriously and obliges Rey in ways more helpful than Force Suggestion. She ends the communication.

 

"At least I don't have to worry about you stealing my ship with her." Rey comments under her breath. "I need to speak to-"

 

"She's going after the Knights of Ren!" Seg blurts out and it's like a Praetorian guard's foot to the gut.

 

"What?"

 

"Elle thinks that the Olim Syndicate is run by the Knight of Ren. I don't know. She claims she saw one of them with a lightsaber when she shot him down and then a prisoner, one of the downed pilots from Taros, escaped earlier without a lot of struggle and she thinks it's Force manipulation. She even resigned her commission over it when the admiral didn't believe her."

 

The Knights of Ren? Quitting the navy after spending the entirety of her life trying to emulate her father, a fleet admiral? Kriff. If the Knights of Ren are truly behind the Syndicate, Elle couldn't take them on. She couldn't take the cartel on regardless if they aren’t the masked servants of Snoke. Not in an old freighter, armed with a weak ventral cannon that Rey's been meaning to replace and a service blaster. If she ran into the Master of the Knights of Ren- Rey doesn't dare to finish the thought. 

 

He killed his father knowingly, it would mean less to him if-

 

Rey grinds her teeth, "Go tell General Organa to meet me in her chambers, at her earliest convenience. Then return to the CFA liaison, I'm not losing another Force sensitive teenager today."

 

"I wanted to discuss that with you, Master," Seg says, puffing out his chest, "I don't wish to return to the Academy. I already decided. I'm 18 and I want to return to the Temple."

 

"Good. We have work to do." Rey places a hand on his shoulder, "Go see the general and then let the Academy know you'll be returning with me. I need to speak with Kaydel first."

  
  


_____

  
  
  


_ 53 ABY Somewhere in Hyperspace _

 

The  _ Millennium Falcon _ may been built before the Battle of Yavin but it still flies like a dream. Elle's grandfather Kes knew Han Solo and fought with him on Endor. She reasons that the late Rebellion general wouldn't mind her borrowing his ship. Hell, Han Solo was murdered by a Knight of Ren so he would probably double down on his approval. Elle tries to squash the thoughts about what Rey would think.

 

Elle strips down to her undershirt, tossing the restrictive tie, dress shirt, and jacket that are making her dizzy behind the pilot's seat as the streaks of hyperspace surround her. She untucks her pants from her boots and loosens them but it doesn't relieve the pounding in her head. In her rush to get off planet, she never did have time to stop by for some blood supplements like she intended. A quick search of the cockpit rewards her with some small bacta patches that Elle uses to replace the bandages on her arms and torso. No blood supplements but Elle knows Rey keeps more medical supplies in the crew quarters.

 

The cooling relief of the bacta lessens some of pressure in her head but not enough. Elle throws on the auto pilot after setting her course so she can go check for more meds but she doesn't make it out of the cockpit.

 

Elle hits the ground hard and she tries to convince herself that she just got up too quickly, so she waits a few seconds and tries again, determined to get on her feet. This time when she gets up, she doesn't remember hitting the floor.

  
  


_____

  
  
  


Elle is small, before Kes was born, maybe even before Dad married Kaydel, and she has her arms out and Daddy is swinging her around the room while making swooshing sounds. 

 

“Black 7 you are cleared for liftoff!” Daddy says in a deep, commanding voice. “Roger, Black Leader!” He continues in a much higher pitched voice, imitating her,  “Preparing to launch in three…”

 

“Two!” Elle shouts with glee, happy to show off her numbers to her dad.

 

“One! And blast off!” Daddy makes a ‘pt-shhh' sound and throws her high up in the air and she roars with laughter. 

 

Daddy, as always, catches her and gives her a big hug, “There's my little starfighter.” And Elle holds on tight and squeezes her eyes shut. 

 

When she opens them, instead of playing Liftoff, she's in her room making out with a kid from her Coruscant secondary school. The boy, Elle can't recall his name, came over under the guise of getting help with their physics homework but managed to negotiate up to tonsil hockey on her bed. 

 

The door slides open and Dad's expression is stony. They jump apart and Dad crosses his arms, “You. Out.”

 

Dad glares at the boy until he's out of sight and then refocuses on her and she shrinks under his scrutiny. “Homework? Really, Leia? Maker-" Dad groans and pinches the bridge of his nose like he's making a decision. "You know what? You're not in trouble, just-just no boys in your room. Please. Promise me you won't make this a habit at the Academy, fraternization isn't a small thing during initial entry training."

 

Elle nods and looks down to the floor, shame reddening her checks.

 

She looks up and Dad is holding her hand as he leads her into the Senate building to go visit her second favorite person on Coruscant, after her dad, of course. 

 

"Ready to go see Old Leia, starfighter?" He asks, swinging their arms exaggeratedly.

 

"Daddy, she doesn't like when you call her that,” Elle informs him.

 

“Which is why I'm entrusting you to not tell her I said that,” Dad winks. 

 

Dad lets her press the button on the lift to Leia's office. The elevator shoots up quickly and Elle presses her face up against the glass, looking down at the bustling capital. Dad leads her off the lift and down a couple doors to the General's office.

 

"Leia!" Elle shrieks in greeting, running to wrap her arms around Leia's midsection.

 

"Hello, dear. Are you here to help me revise this bill?" Leia just returned from a diplomatic mission off planet and Elle missed her almost as she missed Dad when he had a tour with the fleet last year.

 

"I don't think Elle has a head for politics, General. She's too honest for her own good," Dad winks at her.

 

"Besides," Elle happily chimes in, "I'm going to be a pilot just like Dad!"

 

Leia laughs and leans to give her a kiss and Elle scrunches up her face because she doesn't want to catch intergalactic cooties. 

 

Then she's being bombarded by the cries of an infant. It's  _ Kes _ and he's screaming his head off instead of blowing out his dumb two candles.

 

Kaydel is trying to cajole him with a few tastes of icing which only make him scream more. She rolls her eyes from the corner of the room that's packed with her dad's friends and Kaydel's family. Everyone's here for him and he's not even that interesting, he still isn't even potty trained yet.

 

"Elle! C'mere," Dad calls from his place next to her frantic brother and stressed stepmother. Pulling her close when she timidly approaches, Dad whispers into her ear  conspiratorially , "Sometimes little brothers are clueless. How about you show him the ropes?"

 

Elle crouches and waves at little Kes who finally stops screaming to look at his sister curiously. Once Elle has his full attention she blows in his face, his curly hair flipping up and he starts giggling. She blows on his face again to Kes's delight and he tries returning the favor but it comes out as spittle and bubbles. 

 

"No, Kes! You gotta open your mouth." She demonstrates yet again and he continues his giggling, not heeding her instruction and dribbes spit down his face again. Dad is smiling at them like they're the whole galaxy and Elle can't help but feel better. "Fine, we'll do it together. But you gotta make the wish. Okay, one, two, three!"

 

Elle shuts her eyes while she blows out the candles to help her brother make his wish because the gods know that he won't.

 

The next time she blinks, it's into her bowl of porridge during her festival break of her second classmen year when Bea yells in a cereal container, "Kriffing fuck! Mama, Avi finished the-"

 

Everyone falls silent at the table. Then Elle is stifling a laugh that earns her a stern look from Kaydel.

 

"Where did you hear that, young lady?" Her stepmom demands from Bea, her youngest sibling and only sister. 

 

"Elle." Bea tattles happily. But Elle can't remember slipping up this break with her cursing, she's been using replacements like 'tiff' and 'Datooine duck'. 

 

Dad jumps in before Kaydel can lecture her, "You shouldn't be eavesdropping on your sister's private conversations with her friends, Bea. Or using that type of language." 

 

"But Elle uses it!' Bea whines, slapping her face dramatically.

 

Dad copies her theatrics, "But Elle is an adult in the eyes of the Republic's Navy and only speaks that way with her peers. Namely her boyfriend."

 

"But you were eavesdropping too, Daddy!"

 

Everything makes more sense, she had a Holocall with Seg early this morning, kriffing time differences, before her jog with Kes and Dad. Elle huffs in frustration. 

 

"Dad!"

 

"Elle! We're down here!" Dad shouts over the crowd with Avi on his shoulders. Elle jumps down two steps at a time, careful not to spill their drinks. She lightheartedly elbows Kes while she hands him his fizzade. "The race is about to start."

 

"Why don't you race any more, Elle?" Kes asks, sipping on his effervescent drink.

 

"Hard to stay in the circuit when you're on Corellia nine months out of the year," Elle explains. "Signing up next year?" The youth pod racing league in their neighborhood was her stomping ground, where Coruscanti youth race in homemade pods and she was in the top bracket before she left for the CFA.  

 

"Yeah, can I have your old racer?" Kes asks.

 

"Nope," Elle says and Kes's face falls. "Rules say you have to build your own. But, while I'm here for the Corellian summer, we can scrap my old pod and work on building your new one, sound good?"

 

Kes who looks just like Dad when he beams at her. "Besides," she adds, "We have to finish it before I go back to school or else Dad will wire it wrong. Again." 

 

Avi giggles from his place on Dad's shoulders and chimes in, "Dad can't even fix the lights in the garage."

 

"I never was inclined mechanically like you, Ellie." Dad admits and Elle feels a burst of pride. "But at least you got my flight skills. Boys, just you wait, your sister is going to be the best pilot in the galaxy."

 

Elle buries herself in Dad's side, she's almost as tall as him now, and hugs him tightly. 

"Once I'm out of the picture, that is," Dad adds, provoking laughter from her brothers and Elle slaps him twice on his old man gut. 

 

She enjoys the rumble of Dad's chest from his deep laughter as she hits him. And beneath his leather jacket, she can hear the sturdy drum of his heart.  

 

However, the loud beeping isn't normal.

 

Nor the groaning. 

 

Or is that her?

 

She grasps at Dad's jacket but her hands are too slippery. He's fading and they aren't at the pod race any more. She tries shouting but nothing comes out.

 

Elle is yelling for her dad as he dissipates into nothing. 

 

The alarm gets louder and everything begins to shake. 

 

She wakes with a gasp and reality washes over her like a cold shower, the warmth of her dream being stripped from her. 

 

Elle lunges for the controls and she quickly diagnosis the problem. The whacky ship is trying to land itself on autopilot. It's not supposed to kriffing do that.

  
  


_____

  
  


_ Mos Eisley, Tatooine _

 

It's been a long day spent slaving over the cooling unit in one of the larger casinos off of Spacers Row and Ben Solo cannot wait to get home and jump in his fresher. With his pockets a little deeper than this morning, he thinks he can spare the water for a real shower. The sonic fresher never gets him as clean as he'd like. 

 

He stops at a stall on his way to his speeder, grabbing a ten liter can of water to splurge on his shower later. The aging man straps the canister to the front, fastens his goggles, and goes through the ignition sequence of his speeder. 

 

Escaping the space port's city limits, Ben punches it. Maybe he'll mix the synth cream with some fruit for dessert tonight. Or maybe he'll crack open the Corellian whiskey and watch the sunset like the sad bastard he is.

 

Tomorrow he needs to finish up those droids for that young couple in Anchorhead, one's a nanny droid and the wife is already rather round. Not too long before that nanny droid will to be back for repairs, new parents usually don't keep up with the maintenance, especially with the corrosive sand. He should use more insulated wiring on that one, save them some credits and a headache later on.

 

Along the horizon there is mirage in the afternoon's oppressive heat. As he approaches, it becomes less mirage like and more impossible. It's a ship, half buried in the sand with the tall tale signs of Tusken Raiders circling. 

 

But of all damned things, it's the  _ Millennium Falcon _ sticking out of the sand with those raiders ready to pick what they can off the bone.

 

He cuts the speeder's engine a good distance away, hurdling over the side and yanks off his goggles and unravels his face wrap. A couple of raiders break formation and approach him warily. 

 

" _ Good day _ ," Ben calls in the guttural sounds of Tusken, completely removing his headgear and holding out a hand in greeting. 

 

One of the raiders get off of their own skimmer, " _ What business do you have here, human? _ "

 

He thinks quickly, " _ This is my buyer's ship. Came all this way for a rare part. Travel here was dangerous enough _ ." Ben gestures at it, hoping his accent isn't twisting his meaning.

 

_ "This spacecraft could use your master hands, Matt Radar," _ the raider calls him, they must be from the Jundland Wastes to know him by that name. He's done business with some Tusken Tribes out of his compound, usually most people won't trade with them. " _ Give us something to make my chief happy and we'll leave the ship be. _ "

 

" _ 10 liters of water and batteries that are compatible with your skimmers?"  _ He offers.

 

" _ Water and old batteries in exchange for a ship of this size?"  _ The Tusken leader tuts. 

 

_ "That and fifty credits, all I have." _ It will hurt over the dry season but if there's any chance-

 

" _ The water, batteries, fifty credits and you complete repairs for us for a season?"  _ That will hurt even worse but it will help clean out his scrap garage. Tusken seasons are roughly three and a half standard months and long enough to make him probably regret this in the long run.

 

_ "Done. What is your tribe's name?" _ They exchange details and parameters for their deal quickly. Major repairs only and free wires and other small essentials, only for their tribe. The Tuskens speed off in search for their next bounty with his fresher water and hard-earned credits. 

 

Thankfully, the boarding ramp of the  _ Falcon _ is extended even if he has to pull himself up as the ramp is suspended in the air with the tilt of the ship. Ben Solo climbs into his father's ship for the first time in almost two decades and he doesn't dare to breath. There is no one to greet him, or to attack him as he suspects is the more likely of the two. 

 

"Hello?" He calls, maneuvering through the halls, awkward and tall as he's always felt in his father's ship. More softly, "Rey?"

 

When he crosses the threshold of the cockpit, Ben finds the only crewmember on the freighter, pale and unconscious with a bleeding nose. The girl is too young and alone to have been seeking him out, he deduces. Scoffing at her attire, boots, blue slacks with blood stripes, and a white undershirt, his eyes flicker to the dash and his father's sabbac dice are glittering at him. 

 

Han Solo's only son feels for a pulse on the young woman and finds it to be too slow but still there. There's no bleeding but they're too far away from Mos Eisley, the nearest medic. Anchorhead has an on medic droid he can borrow on the way to his compound. He grabs the dice, shoves them in his pocket, and swoops down to pick the girl from the pilot's seat. After a struggle, he manages to escape the ship without injuring the girl further. However, he does twist his ankle on the meter drop between the end of the ramp and the ground. 

 

Ben secures the girl in the back seat, he makes sure to cover her face with an extra wrap, and then reaches out to someone who owes him a large favor with his commlink, they're not too far from Anchorhead anyway and the expectant father owes him more than this. 

 

During his ignition sequence he makes a decision and slaps the dice around his rearview mirror hastily, like he expects to be struck down for reclaiming it. But the Force lets him be as they drive off in the sweltering afternoon.

  
  


_____

  
  
  


Elle wakes up in a much better state than crashing in a dilapidated Corellian freighter. This time she is swaddled in blankets on a fluffy cot in a...cellar? She sits up too quickly and her vision blurs.

 

"How do you feel?" A voice asks from across the room. Elle cradles her head in her hands and waits a second before taking a look at them.

 

The human male is tall with long dark hair that's peppered grey, a scruffy beard that’s darker than his hair, and a crooked nose. He stands by the doorway.

 

"Like shit," she mumbles. “Where am I?”

 

"I found you in that wreck about 15 clicks north of Anchorhead.” Good, she thinks. At least she's on the right planet. “There aren't any nearby medical facilities therefore I brought to here instead of the unmanned clinic. I brought in a med droid to assess your injuries earlier. When were you injured?" The man asks, voice monotone.

 

Elle tries to think but since her dad's death, everything has happened so fast and she was in that bacta tank for who knows how long and then spent the days after in and out of drug induced sleeps. "I dunno, a couple of weeks? Happened at Taros." Maybe he keeps up to date with the Galactic news or something and can fill in the details himself.

 

The man steps out for a moment and reappears with a tray with a kettle and a pill bottle. 

 

"Here’s two blood supplements as the droid ordered. And tea and bread to go with." He says as he sets down the tray next to her on the nightstand. 

 

Elle grabs the supplements immediately and her host pours her tea into a small cup. She downs the pill and washes the bitter taste away with the citrusy tea. When she reaches for the cloth he provided on the tray to wipe her mouth, she freezes. It's folded in the same elegant and intricate pyramid that Leia Organa folds her napkins she serves with tea to guests.

 

"Who are you?" Elle asks confused and not fully trusting herself to make such, she's drowsy with the warm liquid already luring her back towards sleep.

 

"Matt." Is his only answer.

 

"Matt what?" Elle presses.

 

"Just Matt," Just Matt insists, shrugging.

 

"Well Matt, I'm Elle," she gives a little salute as she leans on the bed, ready to crawl back into the numb existence where she didn't have to be in the same galaxy where she killed her own father.

 

"Sleep well, Elle." Matt offers and he retreats out of sight, shutting the dim light off as he goes.

 

And she does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Mos Eisley](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mos_Eisley)   
>  [Tusken Raiders](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tusken_Raider)   
>  [Anchorhead](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Anchorhead)   
>  [Fizzade](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Fizzade)
> 
> Yee haw. Originally, I was going to scrap this entire chapter but I enjoyed writing cute dream sequences too much. This chapter is brought you by my funemployment.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An enlightening adventure in Mos Eisley and an even more enlightening one in Matt's garage.

_ 46 ABY Coruscant _

 

Rey’s always known that Elle was Force sensitive. The moment she recognized Elle’s existence, she could feel it and her Force signature was strong, so strong that Rey isn’t sure how the other Force sensitives in her life hadn’t picked up on her pregnancy before she did. Rey didn’t process the symptoms or take a test until she was three months pregnant. Leia Organa never mentioned it before Rey went into hiding, using the pilgrimage excuse to mask her pregnancy and delivery. Nor did Ben Solo before he defected.

 

During her visits to Coruscant and her short, treasured time with her daughter, Rey’s witnessed some of Elle’s clumsy experiments with the Force as she grew up. Simple things, like floating a toy to her crib or a treat from the kitchen counter. When she was learning to walk, Poe sent holovids of Elle tripping over herself but never hitting the ground because she instinctively pushed with the Force instead of falling on her face.

 

Elle proclivity to choose the Force over refining her motor skills worried Poe when she was a toddler to the point that they had to actively encourage her to do things the difficult and more physical way. Maybe that’s where they went wrong?

 

Because now, Elle is ten and has long forgotten how she had used the Force reflexively as a baby. Instead, according to Poe, she’s out right denying her abilities.

 

Poe had comm’d Rey last week to inform her of this recent development. He wanted Rey to speak to their daughter about it while she’s planetside for her scheduled Senate meetings. Of course she agreed but her reservations are still there. Rey’s never dealt with a youngling that refused to acknowledge their Force sensitivity, parents and community leaders had been the difficult ones in her experience of recruiting students. But Rey only allows students near the age of majority for their species to join her Temple so she never had to fully convince the non-believers. 

 

Rey arrived on Coruscant to the usual fanfare, engaged with Senators about funding and recruitment for the Temple, debated about proposed future involvement of the Jedi with the Defense Forces in the Citadel, and made it to the Dameron’s just before Elle returns from school.

 

Elle walks in the door and her reaction to Kaydel and Rey chatting in the sitting room is far from her usual. The poor girl barely squeaks out a ‘hi’ and makes a run for her room. 

 

“Elle,” Kaydel calls, concerned, but the only response is the hasty slam of Elle’s door. She turns to Rey, “I’m sorry about that. She’s been off for a couple of weeks since her history class discussed the Jedi of the Old Republic.” Kaydel frowns. “I think she's mostly concerned about their strict recruitment policies.”

 

“She thinks I’m here to take her away?” Rey asks and Kaydel confirms with a nod. Before she can say more, a cry erupts from little Avi’s room and Kaydel excuses herself to attend to her youngest son.

 

Rey heads to Elle’s room and knocks glently. There’s no answer. 

 

She tries again and calls, “Hey Elle, remember you promised me that you’d show me how you fixed your flux converter problem?” 

 

Elle reluctantly opens the door and eyes her warily. 

 

“How about we head to the garage?” Rey prompts with a smile. Elle forcibly returns it but follows Rey outside anyway.

 

The Dameron’s garage is divided into two sections, one for functioning speeders and the other a workshop for Elle and her podracer. 

 

Elle disinterestedly shows Rey the adjustments she made to the converter and when Rey asks about how the performance has changed, she has to repeat it twice before Elle registers it.

 

Rey grabs her shoulder and tries to catch her eyes, Ben’s warm, brown eyes. 

 

“Elle, I'm not going to force you to do anything, you know that right?” 

 

Elle finally looks her in the eye. “I guess,” the girl mumbles.

 

Rey hugs her tightly to her chest, she’s only ten and Rey can feel how terrified she is. “The Jedi Order made many mistakes in their time. Compulsory training and taking younglings from their parents before the age of six are mistakes I refuse to repeat. Do you understand?”

 

Rey pulls back and holds her daughter at arm's length, giving her cheek a quick caress.

 

Elle gives a small nod. 

 

“You can be whatever you want to be, Elle. But you can’t deny you have these abilities, alright? The Force can be confusing and consuming and you’ll need to learn how to control it. But you can’t run from it, okay?”

 

“So, I don’t have to be a Jedi?” Elle blurts out.

 

“No,” Rey laughs slightly and pushes the thought that Elle will never join her at the Temple like she’s always dreamed. That she’ll never learn to shield her mind or build her own lightsaber, two things Rey’s always thought as a safety precaution before Rey would finally reveal the truth about her parents. She’s young, Rey justifies, and she’s her own person. Rey never had the luxury of options until she was nineteen and Han Solo offered her first. Ben Solo was routinely denied them, too.

 

Rey wants her daughter to have everything she didn’t. A family. A formal education. A happy childhood. Choices.

 

“You can be anything you want, sweetheart,” Rey promises passionately, tears threatening to fall.

 

Elle doesn’t notice Rey’s tears and noticeably brightens. “Good. Because I’m going to be a pilot!” She beams.

 

Rey hugs her once more and doesn’t bother mentioning that Jedi and pilot aren’t mutually exclusive.

  
  


_ ______ _

  
  
  


_ 53 ABY Tatooine _

 

The next time Elle wakes, it's to the sound of the scrapping of a pot. The cellar is still dark and cool and she feels like she’s been run over by a bantha herd. At some point in the night Matt must’ve left a water jug for her on the nightstand for her. Elle takes a few gulps before reacquainting herself with standing. It takes a couple of wobbly steps but she makes it up the stairs into the cramped kitchen.

 

Matt is already drenched in sweat with a rag on his shoulder as he cleans a dish with only a scrubber. The sunlight is peeking through the window along the ceiling and hinting that it’s well past mid-morning. He glances up like he’s evaluating her and then turns away to crack a large egg she’s never seen before into a pan.

 

“Sit,” he commands and points at a couch against the opposite wall with his spatula. 

 

Elle complies, sinking into the cushions and takes the time to evaluate what a mess she must look with her creased dress pants and dirty, no-longer-white camisole. A couple of her stitches had been replaced while she was out, she can feel them now as she presses her back against the adobe wall to alleviate some of the itch that comes with newly sutured skin. The medic assigned to her on the  _ Mercy _ said that her original stitches were to stay in until Elle was transferred to a medical facility on Coruscant. Maybe she busted them during the crash. At least her headache has retreated .

 

Matt abruptly drops a plate of the unidentified scrambled egg in front of her. “Eat,” is all he says before turning back to the stove.

 

“Thanks,” she mumbles and spoons a few mouthfuls. It’s chalkier than eggs she’s used to at the academy, which are synth eggs that come in bags. “What type of egg is this?”

 

The only reply she gets is Matt starting to clean the pan with the dry scrubber and Elle doesn’t press. She just eats her egg and when Matt throws a bit of fried, but also unidentified meat, she eats it too.

 

Matt finally finishes fiddling around his kitchen and handles her a pill bottle with only three pills left.

 

“That’s all the blood supplements for a hundred clicks. I checked when I returned the med droid this morning to the clinic.”

 

Elle nods, she’ll have to ration them while hunting for information about Hevron Ren. 

 

“Where are we?” She asks tentatively.

 

“Southwest of Anchorhead, five clicks out.” He answers flatly. Elle hasn't heard of it.

 

“How did you find me?” 

 

“Where are you parents?” He asks instead.

 

“Dead,” she answers honestly but she can tell Matt doesn’t believe her. “My mom died when I was born. Dad died last week.”

 

“Extended family then,” Matt says as he starts to pace in the cramped kitchen.

 

“My mother was Hosnian and the only one that happened to be off planet during the Cataclysm. Dad was an only child and his parents died when he was young,” Elle says bitterly. She shouldn’t have to prove her orphan status to him, even if he did dig her out of the sand. “I’m seventeen and my father waived his rights last year as was required by the Corellian Flight Academy, so by Republic’s standards, I am an adult.”

 

“Adult’s don’t fly spacecrafts alone days after being in a bacta tank,” the older man retorts as he rakes a hand through his thick hair. He stops his pacing and looks at her, eyes tired and stressed. For a moment he closes them and takes a deep breath, “Where did you get that ship?”

 

“I borrowed it.” Elle says and tries to suppress a growing smirk, knowing he wouldn’t be satisfied with that answer. But the look on his face, defeated and exhausted, doesn’t provide the enjoyment she was expecting. Instantly she regrets it, so she decides to answer, “From Master Rey of Jakku. She and my father were good friends. And I kind of stole it after the funeral.”

 

Matt falls onto the other side of the kitchen nook and places his head between his hands.

 

“Maybe she shouldn’t have taught me the new ignition sequence?” Elle suggests, hoping to lighten the mood. 

 

There’s no response and something stops her from prying. Maybe she’s recognizing someone else in mourning. Or she has learned enough about the quiet types in the Academy to know when to just leave them be.

 

She scrapes her plate quickly as she saw Matt do and returns to the cellar to give him some privacy.

  
  


______

  
  
  


Matt comes down into the cellar a couple hours later while Elle is on her holopad, which thank the Force survived the  _ Falcon _ fiasco even in her back pocket, plotting out points on interests on Tatooine. Thus far she has a couple of their major cities, if sub one million population could be considered major, and the supposed site of Hevron Ren’s last stand along some ridge halfway around the planet. It’s what compelled her to steal her old family friend’s ship and run away to a desolate planet. If Hevron Ren was last seen here, he probably wasn’t alone. Everything she found on the Knights of Ren pointed that none of them, save their master, stepped out on missions alone during the First Order days. 

 

She’s in the middle of saving the coordinates when Matt walks in. 

 

“Hey,” she greets with her legs crossed on the bed and minimizes her holopad.

 

“We need to go to the nearest spaceport to look for more blood supplements for you. You can’t be on a desert planet if you have low blood volume, no matter how long you stay. Then we can consider your options,” he says gruffly. Elle is not looking forward to hearing any options he drums up. 

 

Matt shoves a pile of loose clothing at her, “We'll take my speeder to Mos Eisley and you should be wearing more clothes unless you want to add sun blister to your list of injuries.” 

 

When Matt steps out, promising to meet her outside, she changes into a large tunic he provided. Elle pulls her hair back into a lazy bun and opts to not wear Matt’s trousers as they are far too long for her, she would have to buckle it almost at her armpits. She keeps her service boots, hoping the sand will scuff away their shine soon enough. Elle also wraps a long scarf looking thing around her head.

 

Matt gives her a critical look when she joins him in the yard. “I gave you pants as an opportunity to stop wearing those damn things.” 

 

“What's wrong with these?” Elle asks, exasperated. “They’re just kriffing trousers.” 

 

“Stolen valor for one.” Matt starts.

 

“Hey! I earned these blood-" Elle tries to inform his over presumptive ass before being cut off.

 

“Two, the material is just stiffer than Bantha wool and you'll become fatigued faster out here. But suit yourself.” Matt says while leading her around to a large garage that houses his landspeeder and a lot of junk.

 

“I really did earn the dumb things,” Elle tries again.

 

Matt scoffs, “And I'm the Prince of Anchorhead.” At her blank face, he supplies, “Closest town. You're on Tatooine, just so you know.”

 

“I am well aware, my prince.” Elle rolls her eyes and takes a seat next to him in the speeder. “Which spaceport are we going to again?”

 

“Mos Eisley. It's about 100 clicks north of here. I can have us there in two hours. Here's some goggles. You'll need them.” Matt tosses a pair from under the dash at her and sets about with engine checks and so forth until the speeder roars with life. 

 

They pull out of the garage and Elle sees the  _ Falcon _ on supports on the far side of the garage. It isn't as bad as she had imagined but she winces at the thought of returning it to Rey in such poor condition. Hells, it may not be able to leave atmo or even fly. 

 

Mos Eisley is on Elle's list. It’s one of the largest cities on this planet. The area where Hevron Ren was supposedly killed and then later fed to a sarlacc is far away but the population density is so sparse that Hevron Ren’s last stand killed half of the largest village in his vicinity. Starting in the city will allow her to acclimate and ask around before blindly running off into the wastes.

 

The journey to Mos Eisley is uneventful. Matt doesn’t engage her and Elle gladly follows suit. She is content to listen to the radio play odd bopping tunes and take in the view. Coruscant and Corellia are so populated that the planets’ temperatures are mostly regulated artificially and Elle’s never felt this kind of heat before, ignoring the flames that nearly melted her legs off a couple weeks ago; Elle feels like she’s getting good at that, ignoring. Tatooine is the opposite of the two Core planets. Elle’s never been on a planet where someone could go days without bumping into another being or to a place where you could see the sunset hit the horizon unimpeded by the massive buildings that are a mark of the Core. 

 

Elle wonders what it would be like to just take off into the expanse. It confounds her, the thought of being able to walk for days and weeks and still not run into anyone. The desert mirages play tricks on her as they bend the landscape in waves and she wants to laugh because her survival and evasion class at the CFA warned her of desert climates. But now, she content to delude herself that it really is her father in his personalized X Wing waving at her from the dunes.

 

The hints of settlement blurs closer and closer together until there is a semblance of a city street and Matt slows the speeder to a hum as they approach. The larger sun is just past its zenith and the streets are mostly empty in the residential outskirts but as the buildings blend closer together and get larger, there are market stalls open and younglings getting in the way of their speeder with a ball game. 

 

The speeder comes to a halt in front of a shack like building squished between two larger ones with a hanging sign that says “Reel Medic” in galactic standard and also misspelled in Bocce and what her educated guesses are Tusken and Jawaese. Elle grimaces and gingerly crawls out of the speeder.

 

“You’re sure this is a ‘reel’ medic?” She calls to Matt, looking up the street for any better options.

 

Matt is already striding towards the door that’s too small for its frame, “We’re just here to look for your supplements. Not complex surgery.” He has to duck on his way in.

 

There is no cooling unit inside the ‘reel medic’ to Elle’s dismay and lack of surprise. It actually feels hotter than outside with its lack of circulation. Matt is in the midst of a conversation with the Bith clerk at the front desk. Elle knows some Bocce from the academy, the old language of spacers, from some of the more rogue instructors from the last Galactic Civil War but most of it was slang and alternatives words for ship parts. Most of Matt’s conversation with the Bith in Bocce goes over her head and when headache comes on she decides to sit on the bench outside the clinic.

 

Elle pulls her goggles off the top of her head to wipe her brow and takes a deep breath. The wooziness that snuck up on her while on the  _ Falcon _ is making its awful return. She’s debating the benefits of taking one of her blood supplements now when a shadow blocks out the larger of the suns for her. 

 

It's a little Dug woman with a shawl wrapped around her slight green figure. The old lady is eyeing Elle like a traveling droid salesman knocking on her door during dinner. Curious and ready to say something rude about it. 

 

“What are you doing around folk like  _ him _ ? Bit young for a man who's closer to death than his mother's teat,” she demands brashly, throwing a stink over her shoulder towards Matt's speeder.

 

“He's just helping me get on my feet is all. My ship crashed-" Elle tries to placate her.

 

“I've seen that man come and go through this spaceport for twenty years, girl.” The old lady sharply interrupts. “And he never had nobody with him. What makes you special? Yea, you're a pretty one. With those fancy boots and Blood Stripes…haven't you heard what they do to folks who wear them unearned?”

 

“I have earned them. Heard of the Holonet? Fucking look it up. Leia Dameron. Corellian Blood Stripe, First Class.” Elle grits through her teeth. She would stalk away if she wasn't reeling so much from the dry heat.

 

The Dug just laughs, a croaking sound deep in her throat, “Oh, I like you, girl. Matt the Tech isn't a match for your fire. You know, he's always been single. Even with the way some of the widows ‘round here pay him nicely to just check on their wirings. They always cut their cooling units to try to get him to take his shirt off.”

 

She's just a gossip, Elle laments but she’s still irate. Nodding along as the Dug prattles on about Matt and older women trying and failing to put the moves on him, Elle gets too tired to be angry with the old lady.

 

“At first, I was worried that maybe the problem was he liked ‘em young, you know. But you're just a lost little spacer on her way back to the Navy. He's a gruff man but a good one. Never heard anybody complain about his work. Except for that thrice damned Hutt boss. I think he just wants to recruit him for his little posse, between you and me. Makes Techy boy come all the way up here from Anchorhead and then tells him to tweak a thing or two in each of his casinos and takes the whole day. That Hutt...”

 

Elle’s head feels inflated and her stomach is too nauseous to follow along anymore so she gives the appropriate hum here and grunt there when the woman comes up for air. Sitting there, in the heat of Tatooine without enough blood in her system to function normally, the slow circuitry of her brain is still able to come up with an idea.

 

Elle waits for break in the lady’s conversation with herself, “Hey, I heard stories that you got a dead Knight of Ren.”

 

At first, Elle could see her initial indignation for her disruption but her excitement about their new topic smoothed it over quickly, “The Monk is what they used to call him. The village along Taltort ridge even kept his helmet if you go see for yourself, my nephew once saw it on the way to visit his wife’s family, not the best of families, let me tell you. But, that’s right. Tatooine’s own Knight of Ren. They fed his body to a rancor-”

 

“I read it was a sarlacc,” Elle interjects, amused.

 

“A sarlacc? No, the good people of Taltort ridge ain’t no Hutt bosses. They had to make do. The Republic won’t even acknowledge it, just thinks it’s some hoax out here in the Outer Rim. Fools, they wanted more proof. We have the helmet! What more do you want? They didn’t even give the bounty to our good Matt. A shame.”

 

Elle can’t believe her luck. “Matt? That Matt?” She asks, her eyebrows disappearing into her hairline and pointing at the speeder she rode her in.

 

“Yes, child. Killed that Hevron Ren with a blaster between his eyes after the bastard barricaded himself for weeks. Matt’s quite the local celebrity despite his, ah, surly nature. Oh, hello, Matt dear. I’m just getting acquainted with your new friend here.”

 

Matt looms over them both with what would be smirk if he was a normal man. He’s amused, Elle can tell, but it looks more like a grimace.

 

“Yaurel, don’t you have more important things to do than slander the good people of Mos Eisley?” Matt asks caustically.

 

“And miss seeing you out with a woman for once? Never.” Yaurel shoots back.

 

Matt rolls his eyes, “A girl and a friend’s daughter, besides. I promised to see her home.” Matt inclines his head and says in parting, “We have business inside.”

 

Yaurel’s cackles from the street ring in Elle’s ears as they make their way inside once more. The Bith is no longer there and is replaced by a frazzled looking human man wearing a surgical mask. 

 

“There she is,” he calls, muffled. Once she’s in arms reach, he grabs her hand and pricks it with a needle. 

 

Elle is a little slow to react and mutters, “The fuck man,” when he disappears around the corner. 

 

“The supplements are too expensive for how many you need. I sent the droid's medical report before we left. He wants to see if a transfusion is possible.” Matt says from his leaning spot against the wall. 

 

“Un-kriffing-likely, I have-” 

 

“It’s a match!” The reel medic cries from the other room. “The odds. Gods. You two have a rare set of vital fluid. Thank the Force you’re the one who found her, Mattie. Saving her life twice over. Woulda died real fast out there...”

 

“What?” she says under her breath. 

 

Elle is stunned. She’s never met someone with her blood type before and the medics in the Navy said they’d get her some high-quality synthetic for her rare blood type once they transferred her to a facility on Coruscant. They didn’t want to risk rejection with the lower grade stuff after the severe trauma and so they just prescribed her blood supplements to hold her over. 

 

Matt also looks perplexed. 

 

“Lucky for my credit stick,” is all he says as the medic leads them to the back and hook them up by the inside of the elbow to a decrepit machine that the medic swears on his life he sterilized. 

 

Elle hears Matt mumble a curse before the medic flicked the machine on.

  
  
  


________

  
  
  


The transfusion took a while but the medic told her it was to be expected with the midday dehydration.  Elle didn’t enjoy the weird pulse of the machine pushing blood into her veins or the rest of their misadventure as the Reel Medic Clinic but they’re halfway back to Anchorhead and she’s feeling much better.

 

The conversation she had with Yaurel before the procedure has her distracted the whole drive. Matt is back to the silent treatment with the strange radio being mostly drowned out by the speeder’s engine. 

 

It takes her more than a couple of countdowns before she finally spits out, “Did you really kill Hevron Ren?”

 

Matt spares her a sideways glance but says nothing.

 

“That’s what that lady said in the street.” Elle says, hoping it would prompt him to respond.

 

“Yaurel is a gossipmonger,” Matt shrugs, not taking his eyes off the desert in front of him.

 

“And you killed one of the most powerful men in the galaxy,” Elle says.

 

“And you crash one of the most famous spacecraft in the galaxy.” Matt says in a harder tone.

 

“My father was killed by a Knight of Ren.” Matt scoffs like choking back a laugh and Elle is ready to fucking deck him.

 

At her furious face, Matt holds up a hand in surrender, “So was mine.”

 

Then they have something more in common than rare blood types. Her eyes narrow and she punches him as hard as she could in her weakened state in the arm.

 

They swerved slightly due to the fact Matt was using that arm to drive. “Hey! I’m- look, I’m sorry kid. I’m alone in the desert for a reason, alright?”

 

The fact he saved her from certain death in said desert is the only thing that keeps her from doing it again.

 

“What happened to your dad? I know you mentioned it was recent,” Matt asks.

 

“He was an admiral,” Elle starts, willing herself to not cry as her voice hitches a bit. “And he was shot down over Taros. Later, I shot down one of their fighters in atmo and his ejection mechanism got stuck but he escaped by using his red lightsaber.”

 

“Not that I want to get punched more, but you do know anyone can own those laser swords?” 

 

“I fucking know that! Kriff, you sound like my dumb Jedi friend.” Elle says, recalling bitterly when Seg said almost the same thing after the funeral. 

 

Matt snorts but then clears his throat loudly, “You said your dad was friends with, um, Rey of Jakku?”

 

“Yeah, since the Resistance days. Finn Tico, Rey, and Dad go way back.” Elle even called Finn ‘uncle’ when she was younger but then he moved to work with former storm troopers in the Mid Rim and she was old enough to call him by his first name then next time she saw him. 

 

“What was your dad’s name?” 

 

“Poe Dameron. He died fighting the scum of the Galaxy.” Elle bit the inside of her lip and a few tears escape. Then she is angry again, “Slavers under the name of the Olim Syndicate. Silus is the name the pilot I shot down.” Matt freezes in his seat and stops making conversational eye contact with her. “He escaped a Star Class Cruiser with high security without a single burn mark, Matt. He’s a Force sensitive at the very least, the worst he’s a fucking Ren. And I know, I know. There isn’t a Silus Ren but he gave that name under interrogation serum. Which by the reports I read, required a lot to get just that out of him. So, it must be his real name or something.”

 

Matt’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel. 

 

“Matt, that’s why I’m here." Elle is determined to get this out now, “I am looking for any scrap of information that will point me in their direction or connect them to the Syndicate. The Navy didn’t believe me. If I’m right, not only are my father’s killers loose, the Knights of Ren aren’t playing dress up anymore and the Republic is seriously underestimating them.”

 

Elle was so swept up in her speech she didn’t realize that they had parked outside of Matt’s garage.

 

Matt isn’t moving and is focused on the steering wheel in front of him.

 

“Matt, if you really killed Hevron Ren, I need to know. And I know you’ve already given so much to me but please. Please.” Elle begs, she still has tears running down her face but her voice is clear. 

 

Matt exits the speeder and informs her flatly, “There’re ration bars under the sink.” And he’s gone and disappearing into the the smallest spherical structure. 

 

Elle knows that’s her cue to retire for the evening but she’s not having it. She feels like herself for the first time in weeks. There’s this energy that’s egging her on, beckoning her towards the garage. Not letting it go to waste, Elle grabs a couple of the ration bars and a jug of water then returns to the garage. The repairs on the  _ Falcon _ start tonight. Matt has enough scrap to build his own freighter, Elle reasons that he can spare some. She needs it for the war effort.

 

Hours later, Elle has some flood lights set up around the underside of the  _ Falcon _ when she runs into a weird bolt she’s never seen before. The CFA’s mechanic classes were mostly shallow forays into spacecraft maintenance but the years she spent pod racing as a kid and visits from Rey taught her how to work on the  _ Falcon _ . She just needs to find the right hex wrench. Or something. Elle has a strong feeling that whatever she’s looking for is here that boosts her confidence.

 

Scavenging the garage turned workshop for the tool has her going through dozens of drawers and piles. Still nothing. She spends another two hours just looking for anything that resembles the bolt or something that’s designed to remove it. There is a buzz in the back of her head and Elle is determined to not let this small part be the end of a successful evening of work. She doesn’t work like that. She never went to bed with an unsolved physics problem, it makes waking up to do try again harder.

 

In the far back of the garage, behind a wall of sheet metal that she may have attempted to use the Force to move before the whole thing almost fell on her, there is one locker she hasn’t checked yet and she knows it has to be there, it’s practically teasing her for not finding it yet. After struggling to move everything out of the way, she finally makes it. Elle rummages through the final locker to no success, just more junk as the other drawers except for this weird pipe. It’s dark in this part of the garage so she can’t make out exactly what it is. When she first touched it, she swears she sees something, a flash of green coming at her followed by flames, countless blaster bolts, and finally a draw with blue against red. It happened so quickly and Elle is so tired that she disregarded it as another of those desert tricks.

 

But then she climbs back over the junk towards the light to examine it. Elle runs her hand over it, whipping some sand from the metal surface and she recognizes it  -how could she not recognized it sooner- with its crossguard and dark hilt. She knows before she presses the button that the light emitted would be blood red and that her vision was more than just her slipping in and out of consciousness.

 

That’s how her host finds her, with Kylo Ren’s -his?- lightsaber ignited in her hands and the red glow illuminating her appalled face at two in the morning.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took longer to post this than the last few chapters. I'm on vacation and wrongly assumed I'd have more time to do it?
> 
> I actually have through chapter 7 written, I just try to stay three chapters ahead to motivate me.
> 
> Anyway, hope you liked it and thanks for reading!
> 
> PS: ABY stands for After Battle of Yavin aka the first Death Star in A New Hope and is the standard of years in Star War verse. The new trilogy, thus far, has taken place in 34 ABY. Early 35 is when Ben defects in this story, Hevron Ren debacle happens a year later, and then Elle is born in the summer months 36, she turned 17 during her summer tour, before Poe died/Battle of Taros.


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Confrontation and a deal.

_ 50 ABY _

 

Elle just finished her first semester at the flight academy and Rey had gone five months without seeing her, the longest she’s gone without seeing her daughter ever since their first separation at birth. Rey missed her so much that she scheduled her padawans and knights time off to visit family for the same three weeks the flight academy grants to celebrate New Years and various other holidays depending on the planet. She spent three days running around the galaxy, returning students to their homeworlds before arriving to Coruscant then dropped Seg with his mother down in the lower echelons of the city and then proceeded immediately to the Dameron’s. She told the Senate she wouldn’t be planetside for a week thus spared the bantha and pony show for a few days.

 

The Dameron residence is wild, with Poe back from a month’s long mission and Elle back from school, Kaydel’s parents and the Ticos with their brood all visiting, Leia bossing the droids around, and baby Bea and Rose and Finn’s newest addition holding a screaming contest. When Rey steps inside, she’s bombarded by hero worshiping children. She has to confiscate her saber more times that she’d like to admit to their parents in the mob of hugs and demands to come train with her.

 

But the Force isn’t always kind and the only one who could be her student doesn’t want anything to do with the Force. Nor does she eagerly greet Rey as the others, she tries to shake Rey’s hand and only embraces her after her father prompts her from across the room.

 

Something in Rey’s chest breaks, as it does every time she watches her only child treat her as only her father’s old friend.

 

Rey settles into the party, animatedly talking to Finn about their decision to buy a new spacecraft and taking turns to hold the babies. Dinner comes and goes without a hitch. Now, the adults are relaxing in the kitchen, enjoying a nightcap or three after the youngest children have been but down and the older ones play a quieter game up stairs.

 

The evening waxes on and Rey volunteers to wrangle the older children into bed once the clock hits eleven. The Dameron home is a mansion with four stories of living space, a rooftop garden, and enough bedrooms that only the Tico’s adopted twins need to share a room with all the visitors. She climbs the stairs and meanders down the hallway, the commotion seeping out from behind the sliding doors.

 

“No! I’m Elle’s apprentice!” Yells little Avi Dameron to his elder brother as he attempts to impale said brother with a foam blue lightsaber. The three awake Tico children are hunched behind an up turned lounge chair with their own toy sabers of various colors. 

 

Elle is picking her nails from her place on top of a coffee table, twirling the only red foam saber in the room.

 

None of them seem to notice the Jedi Master from her spot behind a potted plant at the doorway.

 

“It doesn’t matter. Sith versus Jedi is boring anyway,” Kes Dameron proclaims.

 

“Oh yeah,” Elle challenges. “You have a better idea, smart guy?” 

 

“Yeah. Let’s fight the Knights of Ren!” Rey’s sharp intake of breath goes unheeded.

 

“Nah, I like Darth Vader better,” Elle shuts him down.

 

“Vader was mostly a cyborg,” complains Pippa Tico who climbed on the couch to make her point. “Kylo Ren had to do most of it himself. And I want to be Rey!”

 

Elle scoffs, “Vader at least had the grace to die at the end of the war.” 

 

Rey feels nausea crash over her. She’s obsessed over how to tell Elle about her biological father but it never occurred to her how much exactly she’d already know about him. It’s stupid of her, in retrospect, Kylo Ren is the most infamous fugitive in the galaxy. Of course Elle’s heard of him and had time to garner a venomous opinion of him.

 

In a more authoritative voice, Elle follows up, “Besides, it’s not a good idea.”

 

“I’m Kylo Ren!” The twins shout as they rush the Dameron brothers, wacking them with the foam sabers.

 

Now Kes and Avi want to be Kylo Ren and they exchange blows, trying to beat the others into submission to claim the title.

 

Rey finally collects herself when Elle steps in, pushing the younger children apart. 

 

“Kriffing stop!” Avi gasps at her curse and Elle starts taking their foam swords away. “We don’t play Kylo Ren.” Elle states firmly as she yanks away the last foam sword from the boys. “Do you understand?”

 

“Why?” They whine. Elle is at a loss for words and glances around, meeting Rey’s eyes, hidden poorly behind the plant. Elle gestures her head, looking for backup.

 

“It’s time for bed,” Rey announces, stepping out from her vantage point. They don’t need much prompting as they know that if she’s been sent to put them in bed, the Master Jedi would be telling them bedtime stories tonight. They run out of the room to go change and brush their teeth, leaving Elle and Rey in the recreation room.

 

“I didn’t want them playing that in case Leia walked in.” Elle explains and Rey is suprised.

 

“You know about that?”

 

Elle gives her a strange look, “Know what everyone else in the Galaxy knows with the parental locks on their holopads off?”

 

Rey isn’t sure what to say to that. ‘Your father isn’t that bad? But is? To me, Kylo Ren is just a history of promising to be Ben Solo and breaking my heart for it?’

“Do I have to go to bed, too?” Elle asks.

 

“I don’t think the top cadet at the Corellian Flight Academy in her class qualifies as child.” Rey says warmly, pride surging through her heart.

 

Elle returns her smile bashfully and asks, “Can I still hear your story? Then join the adults downstairs?”

 

Rey pulls her into a hug, savoring being taller than her for a moment because she’s afraid the next time they’ll have this Elle will be towering over her. 

 

Later, Rey decides to tell the story about how Kylo Ren once stood with her against the Supreme Leader and his elite guard for the first time in their hearing. As the children ooh and ahh at the drama of the battle, Elle looks sad from her spot between her brothers.

  
  


_______

  
  
  


_ 53 ABY Tatooine _

 

“You’re Kylo Ren.” Elle accuses with a shout, her echo reverberating off the metal walls of the garage, her jaw twitching. 

 

‘Matt’ makes no attempt to deny it. Just stands in the garage door way.

 

Anger creeps in and chases her disbelief away. The fingers grasping the lightsaber twitch with renewed energy, fueled by it, but she’s paralyzed by indecision. Should she go cut this man down now? Get it over with and collect the bounty as a nice purse to use for hunting down the rest of his minions. Or should she interrogate him for the locations of his compatriots? Elle doesn’t know how to mind probe like Jedi or Sith but she thinks she can think a way around it for the man that in kind tortured her father all those years ago. Maybe if she brought him to Rey in chains, her old nemesis, she would forgive her for borrowing the  _ Falcon. _ The Senate may be a better choice, they are the ones with the million credit bounty on his head. But then kind, old General Leia would have to watch her son be executed. 

 

A long moment passes as Elle thinks.

 

“Did you kill my father?” Elle demands at last.

 

Alleged Kylo Ren suddenly moves and Elle takes a few steps in his direction, the crackling saber raised, ready to strike. He freezes and holds up his hands in surrender. Elle continues until she’s within striking distance, rage whirling in her chest.

 

“Did you,” Elle grinds her teeth, “Kill my father?”

 

“Kid,” He sighs, “I haven’t killed anyone since Hevron Ren almost twenty years ago.”

 

The way her fury evaporates is like a head cold dissipating in an instant and she can think, breath, clearly again. Elle lets the lightsaber drop below waist level but she doesn’t shut it off. It feels awkward in her hands. 

 

“But you killed Hevron Ren.”

 

“Yes. Now you can extinguish that thing.” Kylo Ren gestures at the saber. “Please.”

 

Elle doesn’t comply. “You tortured my father.” Her anger returns, with less intensity but it still prowls around her head, ready to strike.

 

“And you crashed my birthright,” Ren returns, tilting his head to the side and narrows his eyes at her.

 

“You lost that right when you ignited this thing in your own father’s gut.” Elle snarls, her lip quivering with what she convinces herself is just anger. She grew up on Han Solo stories from her father, Rey, and the best ones were from Leia. When she was eight, she searched her hero on the holonet and cried herself to sleep for three nights straight after discovering how Han Solo met his maker. 

 

“You’re going to lose a limb if you keep holding the saber like that."

 

Elle stops the twirling that she doesn't remember starting. 

 

“You're a monster.”

 

There is a pained look in his eye as he focuses on the red plasma, avoiding her steely gaze.  “Yes. I am.”

 

His sincerity makes her press the button and shuts off the laser sword. The voice is so raw and he sounds like she did days ago on Coruscant when reuniting with her siblings whom she helped to orphan and her step mother whom she helped to widow, exhausted and defeated. “ _ Yes. I was there when he died.” _

 

“I’m not going to hurt you but you need to give me the saber,” he states firmly. 

 

“You’re kriffing insane if you think I’m arming you.”

 

“I’ve had a blaster on me since I found you in the desert. If I was going to hurt you, I think I would’ve done it before bartering away my savings to save your life.”

 

“That’s before I knew you were Kylo Ren.” Elle spits and she’s surprised when Ren flinches at the name. “What? It’s your shitty name.”

 

“You should still hand me the lightsaber,” the old war criminal still insists.

 

“Give me one reason I should trust you.” Elle has only heard of treachery from him and she was raised on war stories. He cut Snoke in half and only joined the Resistance for a short while before defecting back. 

 

He scoffs. “Give me one reason I should trust an unstable kyber crystal in the hands of a novice Force user.”

 

“How did you know -”

 

“Heard of the holonet?” Elle looks at him queerly, there’s no way he heard her conversation with the town gossip earlier, “The vids of your stunt on Taros was leaked. What you did should’ve been impossible, flying into a wall of laser fire, but here you are. Either you’ve been flying decades longer than you’ve been alive or your abilities are supplemented by the Force.”

 

“I could be a Jedi Knight, come to hunt down you and the rest of your lot.”

 

“It’s been nearly thirty years since I was a Jedi but I don’t think they would be so neglectful of basic lightsaber training. Like how the dominant hand goes above the non-dominant.”

 

Elle quickly corrects her hands, slightly flustered at the direction of the conversation. She has an agenda. “Where are the others?”

 

“What others?” Ren’s face looks genuinely confused.

 

“Knights of Ren.”

 

“I don’t know.” Another shrug and dissatisfactory answer.

 

“Aren’t you the Master of the Knights of Ren?” Elle exasperatedly asks. 

 

“I was,” he agrees flatly.

 

“Until when?” Elle is impatient now and tapping her foot.

 

“What do you want from me?” the former Supreme Leader groans. “I’m guilty of a lot of things but I certainly didn’t kill your father and I haven’t been the master of anything since I was exiled here decades ago.” 

 

“Exiled?” That’s not right, Elle knows the story. General Leia hid him for his own protection during the war and ordered him to stay put until a grand jury could be assembled. He was never exiled-

 

“Why else would anyone live in this miserable sandpit?” Kylo Ren looks like he did in the kitchen earlier today when she told him she stole the  _ Falcon _ .

 

“This is where Rey of Jakku left you, Tatooine?” Elle needs the clarification. She doesn’t understand, the Republic has been scouring the galaxy for him from the second he was reported missing but he’s right where the Resistance left him?

 

He nods and runs a hand through his tangled hair.

 

“You didn’t defect back to the Order?” Elle whispers, daring him to say no.

 

His eyes go wide and his sulk falls off his face. “Wh-what did you say?”

 

Elle clears her throat, “You didn’t run off with the Knights of Ren?”

 

The man that once terrorized the galaxy as Kylo Ren froze, seemingly too shocked to respond or defend himself. And in that moment, Elle knows he’s been here, awaiting judgement, all these years.

 

“That’s what they think.” Elle supplies softly. She can’t help feel some pity for him. This is why he was so despondent after she told him she stole the Falcon. He thought they were finally returning for him. “It’s what everybody thinks. That you double crossed the Resistance and took off.”

 

Elle can see in the low light that his hands are shaking as he turns on his heel. She tries to reach for him but he shrugs off her hand and mumbles, in that broken-hearted way of his, “Well, they are wrong.” 

 

He walks off into the night. Elle’s thoughts are too loud to return to repairs, so she packs up the floodlights and the tools the best she could in the garage. She keeps the saber on her belt even when she makes her way back to her cot in the cellar and settles into a fitful sleep. 

  
  


_____

  
  
  


Elle wakes up before her wayward host and opts to grab a few more of the synthetic bricks that Kylo Ren suggested were rations and another jug of water before heading out to work on the  _ Falcon _ . Last night she reasoned that regardless what she does about Ren, she still should fix the ship. The more selfish part her thinks about the fortune of credits hanging over his head and she was only a comm and a distraction away from it. 

 

But he dug her out of the sand, nursed her back to health, gave at least a liter of his own blood, and she assumes he paid someone to haul the  _ Falcon _ to his compound, he sure wasn’t equipped to tow it with his speeder or the couple of broken droids in the garage. Even if he was war criminal walking free, Elle couldn’t do him dirty. She’ll give him the same courtesy he gave his own father. Elle will only stab him from the front. 

 

Besides, if he was going to run from justice, he would’ve done something about it already or ran in the night but his speeder is still here and the old Corellian freighter sure as hell isn’t an option, falling apart as it is.

 

Elle is running diagnostics on the hyperdrive after an hour of work trying to repair the hull when Ren joins her in the yard.

 

“What are you doing?” He demands immediately from by the garage.

 

“Figuring out if the hyperdrive needs any work or if the damage is cosmetic,” she replies stiffly. 

 

“On Tatooine.” Ren clarifies impatiently.

 

“I told you yesterday-” Elle drops her holopad in the sand, still hooked up to the hyperdrive to finish the tests, and emerges out from under the ship to look him in eye. Dark circles line his eyes and Elle guesses he got less sleep than her.

 

“Yes. But that was before you knew who I am.”

 

“Nothing’s changed.” She says, gripping the lightsaber still attached to her belt. She feels conflicted about the weapon but she doesn’t even have a service blaster so it will have to do while she’s alone with Kylo kriffing Ren. “I’m still going after the Knights of Ren. Now, I’m open to suggestions on how to bring you in-”

 

“What if I helped you?”

 

“Bring you in? Because obviously that would helpful.” Elle had planned asking his preference on the terms of his surrender to the authorities and she’s pleased with her luck.

 

“Hunt down the other Knights,” Ren says like they’re discussing droid specs. 

 

“Okay.”  Elle tries to process his suggestion. “What?” And she fails. 

 

“You were right about Silus being his given name. He went by Aedric Ren. I found the wanted posters on the holonet and your jail-breaker and Aedric are one in the same.”

 

Elle balks at him.

 

“If you are delusional enough to mistake that you can take the five remaining knights by yourself,” he continues, “armed with what - my stolen saber? - and survive to see the end of this crime ring that they’ve concocted, then you’re better suited for a mental facility than trapezing across the Galaxy for breadcrumbs.”

 

“But why?”

 

“Why what?” Ren asks, Elle can tell he’s getting exasperated. 

“Why would you help me?”

 

Ren looks at her for a second, like he’s trying to figure out if she’s a mirage or not, before answering, “I made them what they are. I had hoped, foolishly, that they would go in peace after the Accords. But I know them. And they don’t want money, they never have. If they are running a slave trade front, they aren’t using it to fund pleasure yachts. The artillery pieces they had on Taros looked as advanced as the canons on the your father’s flagship and their shields only were susceptible to short range bombs, expensive equipment. They aren’t in this for money. Don’t you see? They’re only in that business to fund something bigger. Definitely worse than your typical Outer Rim crime syndicate.”

 

Elle bites the inside of her cheek, thinking. “What about you?” 

 

Ren crosses his arms, “After we take down the Knights, take me to the Coruscant in chains.”

 

“And after we take down the rest of Olim’s leadership.” Elle barters.

 

“No,” Ren shakes his head. “The Republic can do its job and deal with the rest. But I will clean up my own mess.”

 

“You know, catching the other Knights isn’t going to save you from the execution you’ll be walking into.” Elle refuses to sugarcoat it for him. She can’t team up with him now and have him compromise her mission down the road.

 

Ren shrugs, let his arms fall to his side. “If I’m in handcuffs, they’ll at least have to grant me a trial.”

 

“And you’re okay with that?” Elle can’t help but be intrigued by this man who was the de facto leader of the galaxy to a nobody in the desert of nowhere.

 

“A lifetime alone on Tatooine is worse.” Is all he offers. 

 

Elle nods and offers her hand, “Deal.”

 

Kylo Ren shakes it, his large hand engulfing hers. “You can even keep the lightsaber.” 

 

That doesn’t help sell it. Elle doesn’t want much to do with the thrice damned weapon but it’s a good deal. Elle shouldn’t question it. But she can’t help herself, “Why?”

 

“You’ll need it fighting the other Knights. And it’s better than Hevron’s. I built it myself.”

 

Elle sees the logic in that but, “Aren’t you going to use it?”

 

“You haven’t noticed?” Ren squints at her again, confused. “Can you feel me?” Elle is offended at the question but he follows up quickly, “In the Force, kid. Force users can sense each other.”

 

“How?”

 

“How can you fly through a barrage of cannon fire and live where a dozen others can’t?” When she doesn’t respond, he follows up, “Kriff. You’re worse than I thought. How can your father be friends with the last Jedi and miss your abilities?”

 

“Oh, they knew.” Ren’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “I didn’t want to be a Jedi. Rey offered. I said no. That was it.” His face softens at the mention of Rey.

 

Elle’s heard the rumors that follow the Master Jedi, dating back to when Kylo Ren first defected and vids of Ren cutting down Snoke to save her surfaced on the holonet. She’s always disregarded them as nonsense. Elle’s known Rey since she was baby and Rey’s never seemed too interested in the romantic affections of men, nor from anybody else. But the way he’s been reacting to her name makes her doubt her previous assessment. Or maybe it was one-sided. 

 

“All I wanted was to be a pilot, like my dad,” Elle mumbles, mostly to herself but Ren catches it. His frown deepens.

 

Ren switches subjects quickly, maybe for her benefit, maybe just because he’s uncomfortable with prolonged social interaction. “Finish up the systems diagnostics and let me know if anything is beyond repair. I don’t have the credits to get us a new ship so we’re stuck with this pile of junk.” Elle makes an affirmative sound. “I have may have a way to draw one or two of the Knights out but I need few hours to determine its viability. I’ll be in the larger of two dormitories working on it.”

 

Ren turns to leave when Elle remembers the strangs nuts from last night, “Hey Ren,” she calls and he flinches at the name. “Have you seen one of these before?” She pulls the one that fell out of the panel and shows it to him. “That’s why I was in your workshop last night, I couldn’t find a head to match this.”

 

He picks it from her hand and holds it up the the sunlight. Rolling his eyes, he says, “It wouldn't have a matching head. It’s just a standard Corellian lugnut that melted during your entry to the atmo. Happens sometimes when you come in too fast.”

 

“Oh.”

  
  


_____

  
  
  


Ben spends the rest of the day tinkering with the comm system that he recovered from Hevron Ren’s corvette twenty years ago.  It’s a mess. He knows he won’t be able to get an outbound message through it, not even to Mos Eisley and forget about where ever in the galaxy the rest of his former compatriots may be. First, he tried to extract the complicated codes that the Knights used in the First Order but then it became apparent that Hevron locked the local data onto the stolen device. Ben could access it only on the broken comm but not remove it. Then he thought of just hooking it up to a newer comm system and running it off that. It takes him all day before he can get a message out.

 

Settling on a simple, encoded message, he sends: “Alive. Dangerous now but will contact later” across all of their old channels under Hevron’s code. He wants to be as generic as possible. It’s been a long time and if they are reorganizing, they’d be more than wary. Especially his sister.

 

After the successful transmission, he pokes his head to check in on the kid. It’s only a couple of hours before sunset and she’s still occupied with the wreck that was Han Solo’s pride and joy. She must’ve spent most of the day stripping the hull and assessing the damage. 

 

When she sees him loitering near, she gives him a half hand salute and then climbs up where the hyperdrive should be. The thought of how much this is going to cost to make the thing space-ready still makes him cringe. They just need one bounty and they are set. As it stands, and he checked last night before the fallout with the lightsaber, the bounties are at 500,000 credits for each Knight alive, less for a verifiable dead one. A million for him alive or dead. The perks of leadership, he guesses.

 

Ben descends into the kitchen, grabbing the flour, eggs, some vegetables and nausage. Luke used to complain about the food on Tatooine but always recommended the dustcrepes with nausage. When he was Ben Solo the Padawan, he tried them on Coruscant at a Dex’s Diner and he had turned his nose up at them. Being exiled here for as long as he has, he’s acquired a taste for the dish. 

 

Usually, he eats two dustcrepes but today he makes six, three each and they are dense portions. He hasn’t eaten since… at least before Mos Eisley. The sequence of events following him finding the  _ Millenium Falcon _ made him lose his appetite. His cautious hope and elation melted into his normal disappointment and self-loathing that clings to him like the coarse sand that he could never keep out of his bed not matter how many times he’s washed them- well the bed that Dameron kid has been occupying. 

 

Once the crepes are cooling and he’s throws on a pot of tea, he fetches the kid who looks reinvigorated at the promise of food other than those ghastly ration bars that he only keeps on hand for emergencies, a habit he keeps up for Rey. He dutifully only touches them to check their expiration dates and to replace them. A task he performs every five years. 

 

They sit at the table and the girl has the grace only to grimace once upon inspection of the dustcrepe’s contents. 

 

The greasy nausage mix dribbles down her cheek and she reaches for the napkin he provided at her seat. “You know,” she says after the offending food had been removed, “I did notice how you folded your napkins.”

 

“Pardon?”

 

“Leia Organa is a good family friend. Almost like a grandmother.” She explains and Ben starts to feel uncomfortable. “I’ve never seen anybody fold napkins like her, she told me it was the fashion at court on Alderaan. Then you bring me tea with a napkin folded exactly the same way.”

 

He takes a long sip from his tea and averts his eyes, not sure what to say to that.

 

“I was named after her.” She has his attention now.

 

“How do you mean?” Ben asks.

 

“Dad named me Leia but after I was born, we were renting rooms in your mom’s house on Coruscant. It was confusing to have two Leia’s around. So, Dad started calling me ‘Little Leia’ until they just started calling me ‘L’.”

 

It’s been a lifetime since he’s seen his mother or her favorite pilot but the envy that simmers is familiar like it was just yesterday he was reading reports on General Organa and the Resistance's leadership, namely her protege. Dameron was always the son his mother deserved, stayed by her side throughout the war and the fact he named his firstborn in her honor rekindles the decades old sentiment.

 

“Ah.”

 

Ben looks at her carefully and in the low light of the early evening, she looks like she could be Leia Organa’s granddaughter with her thick curls and strong jawline. Hell, he surmises that she could definitely be Han Solo’s in Ben’s borrowed large white tunic and her navy trousers with blood stripes. He shakes his head, he shouldn’t be so covetous of a dead man. Ben’s alive which is more than Dameron has going for him.

 

Not allowing himself to keep wallowing, he clears his throat and changes the subject. “I was able to send a message through our old comm channels to the Knights.”

 

Elle sits up straighter and asks animatedly, “How’d you manage that?”

 

Revenge, the best way to distract a young woman from his tragic family history. 

 

“Hevron, his real name was Avsh, hunted me down with my Force signature a year after I arrived on Tatooine. When I first settled in, I was give a special comm to communicate directly with the Resistance. Didn’t need any codes or anything, low tech but hard to intercept because it was so old. Hevron sacked this place while I was out on a job and took it. Hevron was a...spiritual man, not into earthly matters like lightsaber forms or tech. He had no clue how it worked but he stole it as evidence of my betrayal of the Knights of Ren.”

 

He is interrupted by her snort, “Kriff, was the First Order propaganda and bounties not enough?”

 

“Knights of Ren were outside the Order’s chain of command and influence, maybe they thought it was merely a political spat. Anyway, after I recovered my comm, he had ruined it with his ineptitude but saved the codes and encryptions to the Knights’ channels and had sent a few messages. It can’t send any new messages but I was able to jerryrigg it to a modern comm system and sent a vague message out on all the channels.”

 

“Sorry, you lost me for a sec. Got distracted by this rubbery-ass sausage. Break it down for me, bantha style?” Elle asks as she bites into her second crepe.

 

“It’s nausage.” He corrects. “And fine: Old comm had a way to talk to Knights of Ren but broken. Couldn’t send new messages. I hooked it to another comm and sent a feeler message out to see if they are still checking those channels.” Ben knows that came out harsher than necessary. “Dumbed down enough?”

 

“Condescending enough?” The girl gives him a stink eye across the table.

 

“Only trying to accommodate my guest,” he huffs.

 

“Whatever you say, Kylo.” She says with an eye roll.

 

“Don’t call me that,” Ben snaps, clenching his jaw.

 

“What do you expect me to call you? Matt?”

 

“My name is Ben,” he says softly. He’s tired of being Matt the Radar Technician with no surname and no history before landing on Tatooine. No one’s called him Ben since Rey climbed on that ship and flew off into the sunrise, never to return.

 

“Ok,” Elle acquiesces. “Ben. What’s our plan then? Wait for a response?”

 

Ben shakes his head, “I didn’t just ask for their location. I just sent that Hevron’s alive and that he can’t talk right now. They won’t respond until we send a follow up message, if they even receive it. I was thinking that we wait to fix the  _ Falcon _ before re-establishing contact.”

 

“Do you think they’ll respond?”

 

“Maybe,” Ben purses his lips, “By giving it time between the comm’s I think it will make it more likely. A bounty hunter would be more eager to meet up. However, we do have to take his sister into account.”

 

“And Leia thought she had it bad with one son turning out Sith,” she comments lightly and he feels his blood pressure spike.

 

“We aren’t Sith. We were completely ideologically different. Sith never had teams, only master and apprentice -”

 

“And you killing Snoke wasn’t in the tradition of the Sith? Apprentice killing master for the power?”

 

Ben flushes, “I didn’t kill Snoke for that.”

 

The girl smirks and kicks her feet up onto the half-circle bench, “You did it for Rey.”

 

Ben doesn’t want to discuss the Jedi with anyone, at the very least this girl taunting him about it. “I digress, Hevron’s sister was -is- a Knight. And when someone close to you dies, even if across the galaxy, you can feel it.”

 

The playfulness from her eyes dulls over and she takes two long glups of tea. “I know.”

 

Ben knows the appropriate thing would be to address her sorrow and offer comfort. But words fail him. 

 

“How are we going to convince his sister that he’s alive then?” She asks mechanically.

 

“It’s not just death. When a strong Force user experiences an emotional particularly potent, that also can be felt across parsecs. It can be difficult to interpret and Hevron was, um, more intune with the Force than the rest of us. My hope is that their wish to reunite with him will sate any suspicions they may have if we are careful and they’ll assume it was another emotional event. My death, maybe?”

 

“I don’t think anyone who killed you would pass up the million credits,” she says too seriously for his comfort. 

 

Ben shifts in his seat. “The details do not matter, we just need to hope they have seed of doubt that will give us coordinates.”

 

“And we restore the  _ Falcon _ to glory until then?”

 

Ben grunts in the affirmative. “I also have a couple jobs I need to finish up before I can disappear. And for supplies, I have some debts I can call in. Probably won’t get credits but food and fuel is good enough.”

 

The kid slyly unclips his lightsaber and places it on the table next to her empty plate, “And you’ll show me how to use this?”

 

Ben doesn’t need the Force to feel her giddiness at the prospect. “No. I was hoping nature would take its course. It’s a Jedi tradition to lose a limb.” 

 

The Dameron kid replies with what he assumes to be a rude gesture on Core worlds these days. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woot. What a week. Here's the latest chapter. I will probably post the remaining the the already finished chapters this weekend so in the future I can post as I go instead of stress out about being so far ahead.
> 
> I weirdly got more into Star Wars food than I ever planned to. 
> 
>  
> 
> [Dex's Diner](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dex%27s_Diner)  
> [Nausage](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nausage)  
> [Dustcrepe](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dustcrepe%20rel=)
> 
>  
> 
> Please excuse my nonsensical techno babble. I am a liberal arts major, people. My last science class was astronomy where we -no shit- had to list the order of the planets for a test.
> 
> Anyway, let me know how ya'll feel and have a good Thursday!


	7. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the Force is on your side.

_ 50 ABY New Jedi Temple, Ossus _

 

Seg El was Rey’s youngest student, until she sent off the the same flight academy as Elle four months ago when she took in more teenagers. The main reason for sending a Jedi to flight school was to give him an education to ensure he would grow into a well rounded adult. The other reasons were to allow her peace of mind while she adjusted to gaining fourteen new students in a short period of time and that Rey didn’t want him running around the Galaxy on his own just yet, as her students she had granted the rank of knight were needed to help train these new students, not babysit Seg on a goodwill missions.

 

The four months separation were harder than she expected. She had only parted from him for a couple weeks at a time since his mother begged her to take him at the age of five. Rey reluctantly agreed but made a hard rule against accepting children unless dire circumstances like the ones that made little Seg hoard food in his room during his early days at the Temple.

 

Seg returned to the Temple a few days prior as Master Wes, Rey’s first recruit to join the Order during her wandering years, picked him up while she was stuck on a recruitment mission on Ryloth. When she lands the  _ Falcon _ , Seg is there with his scrawny limbs to greet her.

 

“Seg! Finally getting taller than me?” The boy returns her smile and hugs her enthusiastically.

 

He is close but Rey is still able to wrap her arm around his shoulder as she steers him around the meditating new padawans, with their shorn hair and short braids, so they can catch up in their favorite place to in the gardens. The part behind the Order’s vegetable patches and small glass garden where Rey grows the flowers that she’s collected during her travels. Rey used to guide Seg through mediation here, away from the curious eyes of his fellow pupils who were decades older and had no trouble focusing unlike a five year old boy with no playmates.

 

“How do you like school?” Rey asks, mindlessly picking a few weeds in a close by pot.

 

“The Academy is fantastic!” Seg beams, his dark eyes shining. “I learned so much and it's not that weird to be a year older than most of the humans. There's a Wookie in another section in our class and she’s forty.”

 

“Wookies age slower. Chewie’s almost two hundred, you know.”

 

“I know. But, yeah, classes were hard at first. Thank the Force I was able to even place. I have no idea how I did it. Kriff -" 

 

“Language.” Rey warns, confused at his cursing. It's not a habit he had before going to Corellia.

 

“Sorry, Master.” He says quickly, giving a guilty smile. “Anyway, I would've been worse off if it wasn't for Elle. She saved me for final exams.”

 

“Elle Dameron?”

 

“Yeah! Same section so we live in the same wing and have same classes and she's like really good at math and engineering. I wasn’t prepared at all for that stuff and she thinks I’m a better pilot which is crazy-”

 

Rey feels Seg’s excitement well in the Force. First crushes of padawans is another thing she didn't expect dealing with when she started the new Jedi Order.

 

Seg babbles on about Elle and how initially she ignored him until he beat her on their first X Wing flight. Then after how they studied together and she guessed the essay topic on one of their exams. And how she’s from Coruscant too and he needs his own holopad to comm her because he promised he would so they can talk about some pod race coming up in a few days. 

 

Rey probably needs to call Poe about this.

 

“So, you like this girl?” Rey interrupts Seg while he is praising her ability to stack cans on sleeping classmates’ heads.

 

“Of course. She's my best friend.” Seg proudly announces.

 

“Like…” Rey tries awkwardly, “your girlfriend?”

 

“No!” Seg’s olive skin blushes bright red and he tugs on his padawan braid. “We’re just friends,” He insists.

 

“Obviously.” Rey raises a doubtful eyebrow.

 

“Exactly.” He agrees.

 

“So you wouldn't want to accompany me to Coruscant to see your non-girlfriend and her family after we drop off our brethren for their own Festival break?”

 

Seg’s eyes widen and his emotions are being shouted at her.

 

Rey decides they should stay at Leia’s flat for once.

  
  
  


______

  
  
  
  


_ 53 ABY Anchorhead, Tatooine _

 

It takes two weeks for them to complete all the repairs to the  _ Falcon. _

 

Elle liked the rhythm of their days, wake up at dawn, breakfast, work, long break at midday when it's the hottest, back to work or drive to town for more parts, dinner, and then Elle was always asleep the instant she hit her bunk. During their breaks, either Ben brought out sparring swords made of wood and would walk her through basic lightsaber forms in the empty dormitory and sometimes spar or, on particularly grueling days, they’d just sip their tea in silence. Their busy schedule gave her no time to dwell on the events preceding her arrival to Tatooine. 

 

The time they spent together has helped improve their rappaport since their less than friendly reintroduction as Ben Solo and Leia Dameron. Elle even makes a point to call him Ben to his face since a failed attempt at trying to establish a surname basis with him. He just glared at her until she rectified her misstep.

 

It’s hard, Elle finds, to understand the man who accepts mediocre potter or, a small share of their crop for the season for labor that Elle reckons would cost hundreds of credits on Coruscant. Who also writes off debts he owns as nothing when a husband is maimed in an accident in Anchorhead. And does free vaporizer work annually for widows with children and the elderly on the nearside ridge. Elle also discovered that he bartered away months of work and loads of parts to prevent Tusken Raiders from pillaging the  _ Falcon _ while she was indisposed. 

 

She only finds out these things because she demanded to know why he had so many damned bowls, the gossiping grocer in Anchorhead, and the steady flow of Tuskens that stop by. After the third Tusken visitor left without payment, she demanded an explanation. Ben told her about his deal and that he arranged for the Tusken tribe he dealt with to inherit his compound and anything he leaves to settle his debt.  

 

Elle has no clue how to reconcile the man who willing lives impoverished to help out people in tough spots and sacrifices so much for a stranger with Kylo Ren, father slayer and war criminal extraordinaire. 

 

Now they sit cross legged in front of the contraption that Ben built with the old comm system. The  _ Falcon _ is fueled up and packed and Ben has finished his remaining business on Tatooine. Ben switches the system on and there is a message immediately is transmitted.

 

Ben reads it from the holopad he hooked the old comm to, “Who drew first blood at the temple?”

 

“Does it say who it’s from?” Elle asks.

 

“No, they masked the sender information. The good news is that is was sent less than an hour after my first message.”

 

“What does it mean?”

 

“Skywalker’s Temple. They’re referring to its destruction.” Ben explains and then quickly types a reply. “‘It was me.’ Should do it.”

 

“It was Hevron?” Elle is curious. She grew up close to Leia Organa and Leia’s regaled the high points in her life to her and her siblings but she never spoke about the tragedies. In fact, Leia only spoke about her son once in Elle’s presence and that was an accident. Elle knew it by the way Leia froze and she tried to changes topics but words failed her, a very un-General Leia moment. 

 

Ben nods and doesn’t say more. 

 

The response is instant. 

 

“‘Meet on Wymar Moon in forty eight hours. I’ll be in bar at the Precipice Hotel. Come alone.’” Ben reads.

 

“Too kriffing easy.” Elle remarks and is already pulling up information about the Wymar system on her holopad. “Ugh, that’s going to be three am local time. How many do you think are going to be there?”

 

“Not sure. Definitely not all of them. Wymar has a pleasure moon. They must be either raising money or moving product.”

 

“Product? More like sex slaves.” Elle spits like it leaves a bad taste in her mouth. 

 

The Republic outlawed slavery of any intelligent species shortly after it was re-established. Before Taros, Elle knew that she should feel disgust towards slavers but she only saw them as bad guys to be stopped. Post Taros, after seeing the wretched condition that the victims on the medical frigate, a couple of whom comforted  _ her _ , and after the death surrounding the operation, Elle loathes them for their cruelty and utter disregard of life. Not to mention her father’s death.

 

“Could be a number of things, from narcotics to weapons. From what I’ve read, the Olim Syndicate casts a wide net in the services they provide. The Republic is just more focused on the slave trade.” Ben muses as he disconnects the comm system from his holopad.

 

“It’s in the Mid Rim on the far side of the Galaxy. Should take a day and a half in hyperspace with this course I’m charting.” Elle says, focusing on the mission at hand.

 

“Grab your bags.” He instructs. “I have a couple of stops to make before we break atmo.” 

  
  


________

  
  
  


The two stops were to drop off some droids in Anchorhead to an expecting couple and to Taltort Ridge to seek out a man with the spacer paleness who hands Ben a metal helmet with skull like markings without question. The paint has faded from years of display in the sunslight and the whole helmet is a washed out grey. 

 

Ben claims the pilot’s seat and Elle begrudgingly makes herself comfortable in the co-pilot’s seat. As they exit Tatooine’s atmo, Elle watches Ben’s face closely, looking for something akin to nostalgia for his home for the past twenty years. She finds none but later, once they are in hyperspace and they are arguing over the sleeping quarters, he gets wistful look in his eye when they are both trying to throw their packs on the captains quarters. 

 

“Who wants to sleep where they were conceived?” Elle asks, recalling the Han Solo tales she grew up on.

 

“Luckily for you, I was conceived on Endor as my mother always loved to remind me.” Ben retorts.

 

“You can never be sure about those things, they were galavanting across the universe, fighting tyranny and ya know…” Elle trails off, feeling more awkward than she was willing to feel when she brought it up.

 

“If you are done with dissecting my parents’ sex lives, I would like to point out that I am too tall for the bunks in the crews quarters.”

 

“Fine, but only because you suffered that cot to nurse me back to health in your own bed.” Elle surrenders and drags her pack out in defeat. She makes a show of dramatically moping into the other quarters when she realizes something. 

 

“Wait. Then how the fuck did a Wookie live on this ship then?” She shouts, knowing she’s been had. 

 

“Too late, kid!” He shouts back and he shuts the door. 

 

Elle huffs and then moves on to unpack, shoving her spare tunics, underwear, and her new pair of boots, all provided by Ben’s debtors in Anchorhead, into the wall locker. One old woman even sewed her Blood Stripes into two new trousers when she found out Elle was a receipt of the award and Matt’s fake niece, the cover they’ve decided on to ward off judgemental lifeforms that they are bound to run into. 

 

After, Elle uses the sonic refresher, hopefully riding her body of the last bits of Tatooine she’ll ever see again. Once clean and in fresh clothes, Elle returns to the cockpit to find Ben gingerly placing the golden pair of dice where she’s always seen them hanging above the controls. She didn’t process it while on Tatooine but they are the same pair that Ben’s kept on his rearview mirror of his speeder.

 

“What’s the story behind those?” Elle asks as she plops down next to him.

 

Ben jumps slightly, perturbed by her interruption of his moment.

 

He clears his throat, “They were my father’s. This type of die are used in a sabacc variant called Corellian Spike.”

 

Elle rolls her eyes, “Hey, I went to flight school on Corellia. Trust me, I know the Spike. Don’t you have a similar pair?”

 

“I took them when I dug you out of the sand. It’s just a lucky charm from an old smuggler,” Ben dismisses as he reaches up and flicks the die closer to him. 

 

Elle’s heart clenches slightly like it usually does when Han Solo, Rebellion Hero is brought up in conversation. Except now it’s for his patricidal son tenderly admiring a talisman of his famous father. 

 

“Rey’s had them up there for as long as I can remember,” she mentions.

 

Swiveling his chair towards her, Ben looks at her intrigued. He also looks like he wants to ask a question. But he only says, “Ah”, as if he’s trying to play it cool. “My father’s had them since his Kessel Run.”

 

Chewing her lip, Elle is amused by his mask of nonchalance that he dons whenever a certain Last Jedi is brought up. “Rey told me when she met Han Solo, she had only heard of his smuggling infamy. And he got pissy when she got the parsecs wrong for his Kessel record.”

 

Ben’s lips quirk in a small smile and he looks away, busying himself by pretending to check the controls and the autopilot that almost killed her.

 

“Are the rumors true?” Elle blurts out, tired of her internal debate on the rumored star crossed romance.

 

Ben cocks his head back, “What rumors?”

 

“Did you and Rey have a...thing?” Elle asks, now albeit gun shy and embarrassed who juvenile the question sounds. Ben is a warrior of moral ambiguity that’s lived like a hermit in exile for decades and she’s here nagging him about tabloid gossip.

 

Now Ben is fully engaged in the conversation, he sits up in his seat and replies, “I’m unsure what you mean.”

 

Deciding to drop it, Elle just shrugs.

 

“So, how long have you known Rey?” Ben asks, back to fidgeting with the controls. 

 

“Since I was a babe in the arms of a nanny droid. She came around a lot when I was little, before her temple took off and then she was busy. But she would holocall and stuff, she felt for me because of not having a mom and all.” Elle smiles as she remembers, “Rey royally pissed off my dad when I was six and she took me out on a joyride in this baby, she let me steer from her lap. Dad was so jealous that she took me on my first flight.” She pats the console fondly.

 

Ben nods, his eyes on the streaking light of hyperspace. “How is she?” He asks, almost shyly.

 

“Probably karking angry at me. I did steal her ship to go on a revenge crusade instead of thanking her for attending my father’s funeral.” Elle says bitterly. “But good, otherwise. Has like thirty students and likes the greenery on Ossus.”

 

“Ossus?”

 

“Man, use the holotnet sometime. Surely you’ve read that’s where she’s rebuilt the Jedi Order.” Elle feels like sometimes she’s known him her entire life, like when they worked in tangent on the  _ Falcon _ for hours and scarcely needed to speak, and times like these that make her feel he’s spent too much time in hyperspace. Or, more likely, the Tatooine desert.

 

“I avoid the galactic news.” Ben says shortly. “It doesn’t help with the soul crushing loneliness of exile to read up on those who left you to rot.”

 

Elle eyes him with his awkward placement of his legs to the slight twitch beneath his eye, “You still think Rey left you on purpose.”

 

Ben takes the ship off auto pilot to give him something to focus on. “I can’t think of anything else. She knew that they were going to execute me and she mistook my fate a mercy.” He grits.

 

Elle doesn’t share her doubts because arguing with him has gotten her nowhere since they’ve met. What he’s describing doesn’t sound like the same Rey who lent her influence to commute sentences of First Order generals from execution to prison sentences and rehabilitation because they merely decided to surrender at the last second rather than cause more civilian casualties when they were cornered. She waits a few minutes before excusing herself for a sleep cycle.

  
  
  


______

  
  
  


Ben is glad that they went with Elle being the bait. 

 

They are in the still crowded bar of one of the more ocentacious hotels on the Wymar Moon, two hours after their appointed meeting time. Elle is dressed in plain black trousers and one of his billowy dark tunics, wearing Hervon’s mask and pretending to not look around constantly from her spot in the corner. Ben is a few meters away, his eyes flicking between the anxious Elle and good ol’ Silus, otherwise wanted as Aedric Ren by the Galactic Republic, who glares at Elle from his different positions in the crowd. 

 

There are no other Knights of Ren here, he deduces, because if there were, Silus would have acted by now. And it’s obvious he doesn’t want to make a scene in front of potential buyers, or else Elle would’ve been cut in half by now.

 

Silus is plainly here on business and is busy charming customers or investors or just occupying his time while he stresses over the unfamiliar Force signature emitting from what looks like his old comrade. He doesn’t buy the weak ruse and Ben isn’t perturbed in the least. If it had been Ben in the mask without a trace of a Force signature, Silus wouldn’t have hesitated as he is now. They’d be already brawling it out as Silus would have demanded he remove the helmet and reveal himself and Ben isn’t sure if Elle and him could take on a focused Silus. 

 

But an angry Silus, Ben know they can handle. Ben knows he’s angry from the way he’s been sipping on the same drink, now just water from the melted ice,  since they’ve arrived and his twitching hands that keep returning to his belt, to his hidden saber beneath his suit jacket, everytime his eyes drift towards Elle. These tells are something Ben’s been familiar with since they were boys at Skywalker’s temple, testing Silus’s brute strength against Ben’s skill. Silus was shorter than him but built like a tank and they were always the best fighters at the Temple and in the Knights of Ren. 

 

It’s hypocritical for him to call someone else quick to anger but as Aedric, Silus embraced anger ever more than Ben could. It made him more dangerous but ignorant of his surroundings. And it doesn’t look like he’s changed a bit.

 

They don’t have to wait much longer before Silus slams down his glass, violently points at Elle wearing Hevron’s mask, and jerks his thumb at the balcony empty of patrons. Elle doesn’t hesitate and Ben sees the itch to reach for the saber like a lifeline as she makes her way through the crowd out into the brutal rains warring outside.

 

This is turning out much better than their plan of Elle baiting Silus and then making a run for the door, drawing him him to the front of the hotel towards where the  _ Falcon _ is hidden. This way, there are less witnesses to connect Silus’ disappearance with their faces, or face and mask. Ben waits a couple seconds after Silus follows suit before joining, arming his blaster to the highest stun setting. 

 

When Ben joins them out in the storm, unnoticed, Silus is shouting at Elle with his twitching hand with holding his lightsaber, ready to ignite and strike Elle down for the crime of impersonating his old and dead friend. The rain makes it hard to hear the Knight of Ren and he doesn’t care to hear whatever Silus has to say so Ben shoots the stun round and he falls over like a rock. It’s the first time Ben’s seen rain since he left the First Order and he takes a moment to relish the feeling.

 

Elle swoops for the lightsaber and secures it in her belt hastily. Ben knows it was a point of contention with her commanding officer that allowed Silus to escape under the Republic’s nose. 

 

“You alright?” Ben calls as he approaches. Elle nods, rain pelting the mask hard. “Here.” He gives her his blaster still on the stun setting. “Stun anyone who comes through those doors. I’ll be back. Don’t take off the mask.”

 

Ben walks briskly out of the hotel, ignoring the bellboy offering a sonic dry in the lobby. He picks up the pace as he exits the building and nears the landspeeder lot. For such a nice hotel, they have poor security, he muses as he breaks into the first speeder he sees with a retractable roof. There only staff is in a dimly lit office talking loudly about death sticks. His flathead cracks the door open and he is able to make quick work of the wires under the steering column to stop the alarm. A guard only peeks his head out after Ben is turn the corner out of the lot. 

 

The speeder struggles to match the speed Ben demands of it, it’s not reactive to his heavy foot on the pedal. He guides the speeder, albeit slower than he wants, to the ledge of the balcony. Elle has the blaster pointed at him until he lowers the roof and hops onto the balcony. He quickly checks Elle, no changes but still a little shocked, and then Silus who is still out cold. Ben’s thankful there’s no other bodies littering the doorway to the bar. 

 

“You drive,” he instructs as he rolls Silus flat on his back. It’s been a while since he’s had to do this. He positions himself with Silus’s leg and rolls under its weight, his limp body following the momentum. Ben adjusts their capture on his shoulders as he steps on the ledge and struggles slightly to lower them into the speeder. 

 

Ben takes a large breath before shrugging Silus into the back seat and he settles down in the passenger’s seat. Elle wastes no time in putting up the speeder’s top and disembarking from the scene of their crime. 

 

The ride back to the  _ Falcon _ is uneventful and silent, except for the stirring Silus in the back. Ben shoots him again with a lower charged stun. 

 

Elle doesn’t speak until they have Silus tied to a strut in the main hold and then she asks, “Do you have Force suppressing cuffs?”

 

“You’ve seen where I lived. Not exactly an arms room.”

 

“Then what’s your kriffing genius plan to keep him from escaping?” Elle demands, sounding more like herself.

 

“Every time he wakes up, I’ll stun him. We’re only two hours in hyperspace from the nearest Republic military outpost.” He answers easily. If he keeps the stun on low, Slius won’t have any lasting damage.

 

“And if there were more Knights in the hotel?” she challenges and crosses her arms, like she just realized the recklessness of their plan.

 

“Higher stun setting?” Ben offers but it doesn’t do much to placate the upset girl in front of him. “Hey, go get us out here and then take a sonic and change into some dry clothes. I’ll watch him.”

 

Elle uncrosses her arms, uncertainty in her eyes and tentatively asks, “You’d kill him before letting him get away, right?”

 

“Yes.” He promises and her shoulders drop in relief. 

 

Ben prefers that Silus survives to be held for his actions but he isn’t going to trade his only chance at seeing Rey one last time for it. 

 

Besides, it’s not his place to seek justice as the Knights’ executioner. Not when Ben was the one who lead them astray from their paths toward Jedi Knighthood to becoming the scourge of the First Order. He learned that lesson from the years of guilt that plagued him for Hevron - no - Avsh’s death. Avsh he killed in an exhausted rage for threatening Rey and taking the comm. Not for the dozens of people who lost family in Avsh’s last stand or the hundred tortured by him during their First Order days. 

 

It took him a few years to recognize that he got his revenge on Avsh not justice for his victims. It took him a few more to care for the distinction.

 

He refuses to make that mistake again. But self-preservation is a different matter. Silus could kill them all in a desperate attempt to escape, a Force user sometimes just reaches for anything when they’re cornered. Anything like the engine or any other vital parts to a ship in Hypersapce.

 

“You have the call signs for the outpost? Let them know you’re coming for his bounty. Get us there and when we exit hyperspace, lets give him a heavy stun and I’ll hide in one of the smuggling holds.”

 

Elle follows his instructions and he shirks off his cloak that was designed to protect him from the suns, not rain,and therefore the garment is completely saturated. He waits, dutifully shooting Silus twice during the trip. Once he feels the jerk of exiting hyperspace, he delivers the last stun and heads to one of his father’s hidey holes near the cockpit, one where he can keep an eye on Elle.

  
  


______

  
  


Back in her naval trousers, similar to the ones she wore everyday at the academy except for flight time, Elle feels a lot better as she takes the  _ Falcon _ out of hyperspace. The confrontation of Silus shook her more than she expected. She had froze when Silus cornered her on the terrace, he told her that she wouldn’t move and she found herself dumbly repeating after him. It was like a fog overtook her brain functioning for a few moments while Silus was making demands about Hevron. Ben’s interruption may have saved her hide and her pride.

 

The outpost is a small army base whose mission is mostly to provide training to planetary security forces of the Republic’s members and a fuel port for the navy. They responded positively when she reported that she had a bounty to collect but when she claimed it was Aedric Ren, they were less receptive. However, they did have the proper equipment to apprehend a Force user and promised to use it if she could testify to his abilities. She asks if Aedric Ren’s lightsaber would be enough and the guy on the other line choked and assured her it would.

 

“Outpost Zena Two-C, this is Leia Dameron, requesting clearance to land.” Elle calls the ground control.

 

“Permission granted. Proceed to landing pad 15.” Is their rely.

 

Elle steers the old freighter to landing pad 15 and sees the large greeting party made up of a couple dozen of heavily armored troops and a squad of security droids. Elle pulls on her leather jacket, yet another debt settled with Matt the Radar Technician, and tucks Ben’s saber in a blaster hollister underneath it. She readjusts the blaster strapped to her thigh as she waits for the ramp to fully descend. 

 

Walking down the ramp, she is promptly greeted by the commander of the guard, a tall Twi’Iek, who introduces himself as Major Yalen. Elle merely volunteers Aedric Ren’s lightsaber as a response. Major Yalen’s face strickens at the sight of it.

 

“You have the cuffs?” Elle intones again.

 

“Of course.” The Major says as he motions two men forward, both with cuffs that are bulkier than normal.

 

“This way, gentlemen.” Elle leads them up the ramp and to the cargo hold. Silus is still safely stunned and unaware of his surroundings, which now include three burly army officers come to take him away for a long time. 

 

“Who’s cloak is that?” Major Yalen asks, pointing at the abandoned heap of drenched clothes.

 

It’s Ben. It’s also a large garment, obviously too large for her or Silus who is about her height. But they had agreed before they landed on Wymar’s moon that she would handle the prisoner exchange alone. The fewer people with bounties on their minds when they look at Ben’s face the better.

 

“It was apart of my costume.” Elle says, bending the truth a little. “I dressed up as Hevron Ren to lure him out and then stunned him. And hey, it worked?” She giggles nervously.

 

Major Yalen looks at her strangely but doesn’t question it. “I see. And you claim that he also is the same Silus captured at Taros?”

 

They walk behind the men that cuffed Silus’s ankles and wrists as they drag him by the shoulders out of the  _ Falcon _ . “Yes, sir. I suggest you to check his DNA in the system.”

 

“I heard you resigned your commission over this.” Yalen prods. The welcome party escorts the prisoner away and they are left with only a few droids who must regularly guard the port.

 

“I did. The Republic repays my father’s life of service with complacency. I couldn’t let the truth escape with the scum.” Mentioning him still sends a pang of hurt and guilt through her system. She clears her throat. “Now you’ll have proof that Silus the Olim commander is one in the same as Aedric Ren. About payment…”

 

“They are in processing him now. We’ll receive verification on his identity in a few moments, whether or not he is Silus of Olim Syndicate fame. However, orders from the brass say that we will not offer you payment for the full Aedric Ren bounty until the Jedi Order can verify his identity.”

 

Elle wants to argue but knows that with most information of the Knights of Ren, save for Ben’s alias, was lost during the fall of the First Order. 

 

“Can I leave my account information for you to forward my credits whenever Master Rey gets around to it?” 

 

There is a ping on the major’s wrist. “We can go ahead and pay you the thirty thousand credits for Silus’s capture. DNA is a match for the escaped prisoner. Once the Jedi have their turn with him and if they determine your hypothesis is correct, the remainder of the five hundred thousand credits will be deposited to you account.”

 

“Republic doesn’t do double bounties?” Elle asks, half joking.

 

“Not on half a million bounties that are twenty years old.” 

 

She gives him her bank account details and her calling codes. After the formalities are taken care of, the major offers his hand and Elle shakes it, bidding him good luck with the transport to Coruscant. 

 

“Wait,” Yalen calls as Elle is climbing the ramp, “Where did you get this ship? Isn’t this the…”

 

“You don’t recognize this ship and you’ll forget what it looks like.” Elle says in a solemn tone, trying to summon the same air that Silus had used on her on Wymar.

 

“I don’t recognize this ship and I’ll forget what it looks like.” He parrots back before shaking his head and returning to the office that overlooks the launch pads.

 

Elle decides that maybe the Force isn’t so bad after all.

  
  


_____

  
  
  


Later, they are docked at a small trading port on the far side of the same planet with the outpost. Ben wanted to use some of the bounty to replace the ventral cannon, something they couldn’t fit into the budget of Ben’s meager savings on Tatooine. Elle also picked up a hot meal for them while they wait for new cannon to be installed. They sit around the table, picking at a stew that has more mystery ingredients than familiar to Elle. For a moment, she thinks back to the conversation she had with Seg during their last days of school about eating spaceport meat together. She frowns into her stew because she’s not able to discern what’s meat and what’s not. 

 

Ben’s busy attempting to hack into the holopad they found on Silus. If the grimaces he keeps making are any indication, Elle guesses their next bounty won’t come as easily as the first. His stew is getting cold.

 

“Can I ask you a question?” Elle breaks his concentration after twenty minutes of silence and scowls.

 

He just grunts and doesn’t bother looking up from his project.

 

Elle takes it as a yes. “Does the Force allow you to control people?”

 

Ben spares a glance and he already looks done with the conversation. “Er. Not exactly. Why?”

 

“On that balcony, Silus told me to not move and I just repeated what he said and then couldn’t move.” It sounds more embarrassing now that she’s said it out loud than in her head. And crazier too. She didn’t freeze up in her first dogfight, why did she freeze in their ambush? Because a war criminal told her to?

 

He sets down the holopad and leans back into the seat. “It’s called a mind trick. Force users can suggest that you do something and you’ll do it if you aren’t guarded against it or of a particularly willed mind set.”

 

“I used it against the commander at that outpost. He was asking about the ship.”

 

“Good call. Don’t want to draw too much attention to this thing. Not as recognizable with how many times it’s been rebuilt but it was still one of the most famous ships in the galaxy.”

 

“Can you teach me to do that again?” Elle asks.

 

“Just that or…” Ben leads.

 

“Or more? Actually, just all of it would be preferable.”

 

The older man snorts and scratches his beard, “It would help if you aren’t mind tricked into surrendering next time we run into them.”

 

Elle scowls, choosing to be angry over embarrassed. It was his fault anyway for not telling her this could happen. He taught her lightsaber forms, practiced dueling and blocking a blaster with the saber but he didn’t say anything about fucking mind control.

 

“Earlier, while you were manipulating the impressionable minds of the Republic, I found something in my hiding place.” Ben continues.

 

“What?” she asks, attacking the larger chunks in her bowl with her spoon, still bitter. 

 

“I’ll show you on the way to Batuu.” He promises while he finally turns to his stew. “Don’t want the mechanics to stumble in on you with a red lightsaber and a guy who kinda looks like Kylo Ren.”

 

“Why Batuu?”

 

“You can get a lot of stuff there without anyone asking too many questions. We need Force suppression cuffs unless we want to make transporting them more stressful than capturing them.”

 

“Batuu is where people go to hide from the Republic.” Elle recalls from her class on cartography and the Outer Rim to Wild Space. 

 

“And sell military grade equipment without asking too many questions. It’s far outside Republic jurisdiction.”

 

Elle shrugs and knows he’s probably right. “To Batuu.” She toasts with her glass of water.

 

“To Batuu.” Ben chimes, already busying himself with the damned holopad again. 

 

His stew is left forgotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shout out to my most dedicated reviewer - engineerwenlock. You're great.
> 
> [Ossus](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ossus/Legends)  
>  [Batuu](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Batuu)
> 
> Fun fact: Batuu is going to be the setting of the new Disney park.
> 
> I'll most likely update chapter 7 tomorrow after my last rounds of edits. Sorry for all of you who suffered through my misspellings of Coruscant.


	8. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another day, another Ren.

_ 49 ABY Ossus  _

 

The biggest challenge that Rey’s faced in regards to her daughter has been a silent struggle for detattachment. Besides, Poe and Kaydel are wonderful parents. Rey knows this objectively. They are the team that’s raised her since she was born, Poe was her main caretaker and Kaydel helping significantly before they tied the knot, and Rey is eternally grateful for that. She is. 

 

But often she finds that she would just do things different.

 

Like when Elle was a toddler, Rey would fret over Elle bumping her head while Poe took a more aloof approach, assuring the little girl that she’d be alright. Or when Elle was in primary school on Coruscant and she got into a schoolyard scuffle over something trivial. Poe was so proud she won, he took her flying during her two day suspension from school instead of any repercussions. Rey struggled holding her tongue when Poe relayed the message over holo. _She didn’t need to be fighting_ -

 

Rey respects Poe’s parenting choices, she’s his daughter - far more than hers - and he’s the one that’s been there to kiss her goodnight and nurse her through her childhood fevers. Rey has not. She doesn’t have a say because she isn’t there, she gets a few weeks a year with Elle, whereas Poe has the opposite, his duties have kept him mostly on Coruscant and his missions are typically short and far in between. 

 

She’s kept quiet on countless choices Poe’s made in regards to Elle for her entire life but she can’t keep her mouth shut this time. 

 

Poe’s inspecting outposts in the Outer Core with a small retinue not too long after the standard new years and he’s stopped by to let her know that Elle’s made her decision. She’ll be accepting her offer at the Corellian Flight Academy later this year. Not coming to join her and the other Jedi on Ossus. 

 

Not that the Flight Academy is a surprise, it still stings, but Rey’s known and accepted that Elle was likely to do just that.

 

The contention is that Poe is currently informing Rey that he’s going to tell Elle about her adoption.  Without Elle being trained in shielding her mind, where any mediocre force user could worm their way into her mind and extract that information. Nor would she be properly armed to combat those who would be overly interested in her bloodline, namely her biological father and his Knights. Elle would be defenseless against them, with no training in the ways of the Force and no lightsaber.

 

Poe continues to justify his decision when Rey finds her voice.

 

“No.” 

 

Poe stutters to a halt, “I’m sorry?” She’s never gone against his parenting so openly before.

 

“No.” Rey repeats. “If she’s not going to train with me, then it’s safer for her not to know.”

 

“Safer?” He guffaws, dropping his fork. “So you intend on holding her heritage hostage until she joins you here?” Poe’s wrinkled eyes narrow.

 

“If she can’t shield her mind-”

 

“Shield her mind? Finn and I certainly can’t do that but we’ve been able to keep this secret just fine.”

 

“It’s always been my stipulation. She needs to be able to protect herself.”

 

“She’s going to boarding school, not joining the traveling circus.” 

 

“Her father is Kylo Ren, not some junior First Order officer.”

 

“Fine.” Poe says bitingly, brustling at mention of him, displeased with him being called Elle’s father. “Well, she’s refusing to be a Jedi. So when do you deign to inform her of her real father then?”

 

Rey didn’t think of that, she assumed Elle would go to this flight school and maybe would be interested in training at the temple afterwards. It never occurred to her that Elle may never accept Rey’s invitation or training.

 

Silence descends on Rey’s solar, where they are currently ignoring their dinner as Rey thinks.

 

“If you tell her right before she leaves home for four months, it may make the separation worse for her. It is her first time away from home.” Rey reasons, her voice quieter. “We can tell her when she graduates?” Rey proposes.

 

Poe gnaws on his lower lip and he also visibly calms down.  “Okay. We’ll wait until then.” He mollifies her. 

 

He offers his whiskey glass in a mock toast and they press on for easier conversation.

  
  


_______

  
  
  


_ 53 ABY Batuu  _

 

Landing at Black Spire Outpost is more hectic with air traffic than Elle’s ever seen. The control at the public landing pad apparently gives no fucks. Spacecraft zip in and out at their leisure and the leisurely pace on Batuu is erratic and dangerous with a dozen ships trying to land or depart. She tried hailing control earlier with no success. With Ben sleeping for the first time she’s noticed since Tatooine, she doesn’t want to disturb him for something as trivial as this. Besides, he’d just say something sarcastic and not helpful like “land it”. Her dad would have her wait until it died down and they’d make fun of the funky ships, some of which are hanging by a thread of durasteel, Elle muses with a pang.

 

Eventually, the traffic let up for a moment and Elle goes for it and in the process still cuts off two other spacers. But the  _ Falcon _ makes it without clipping another spacecraft and Elle accidentally claims a private bay that’s much too large. Writing off her possible moral duty to switch to a more appropriate sized landing pad, she heads to the control office to pay for the space. They can afford to keep the  _ Falcon _ away from asshole spacers that park too closely on long landing strips.

 

With a blaster on her hip and Kylo Ren’s lightsaber hidden under her leather jacket, calling him Ben is easier now but the saber still feels very much like Kylo Ren’s, Elle descends the ramp. The short walk to the office she assumed was control is rife with street vendors and spacers and the office is guarded by a large Shistavanen .

 

“Is this where I pay?” Elle asks the wolfman leadingly.

 

The Shistavanen bars his teeth and grumbles in Bocce, “ _ Pay inside _ .” At least, it’s what she thinks he said.

 

Tentatively, Elle steps through the hydrologic door. It closes with a hiss, doors where she’s from are usually silent, there is probably a break in the pressurizer, she supposes. She’s distracted by the door so much that she at first misses the sounds coming from behind closed doors of what is normally the customs offices at most spaceports. When she recognizes the breathy moans, it’s too late and a seedy looking Togruta asking for credits whilst showing her three different women from three different species and all very naked. 

 

It’s a fucking brothel, she realizes too late. Elle dashes out of there, her face burning, and high tailing it back to the  _ Falcon _ .

 

On board, Ben greets her in the common area while brewing caf, dressed in dark trousers and a grey tunic with a high waisted belt. 

 

“You alright?” He calls as he takes her in, raising a brow at her dishelveness.

 

Elle groans. “I tried to go pay the port fee.”

 

Ben is already smiling, not fully smiling like a normal human but that half smirk he does. “And what did you find?”

 

“Do you not have to pay port fees in Wild Space?”

 

“What did you find?” He repeats, now hiding his smirk behind his mug.

 

“It’s a kriffing brothel, okay?” Elle admits harshly. His smirk only grew. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“Why didn’t you wake me?” Ben shoots back.

 

“You’ve slept like four hours since Tatooine.” Elle brushes past him and readies her own mug of caf. 

 

“I slept on the way to the Wymar system.”

 

Elle glares at him and changes the subject, eager to get off this planet, “So, not port fee?”

 

Ben shakes his head, “Landing pads are maintained by the city. A spaceport with a control and customs and all that you’d see in the Republic systems just makes smugglers and pirates nervous. Which is not the atmosphere Batuu wants to harbor.”

 

“Will anyone be pissed that I took a huge hangar?”

 

The former Supreme Leader shrugs and downs the rest of his caf. “Let’s go get those Force suppression cuffs.” Elle follows his lead, setting down the mug before trailing behind him out of the ship. 

 

Ben slings his blaster rifle on his back and as they approach the throng of people, Ben adjusts it so it hangs closer on his side and ready for use. Elle has had plenty of firing practice but seeing someone carrying a blaster rifle in public is strange. The Academy had strict weapon policies and Coruscanti laws made purchasing anything beyond a pistol difficult. Yet here, on the edge of the Galaxy, everyone seems to have a large weapon strapped to them and Ben’s display is a less effective deterrent than normal. 

 

There is one of every species that Elle’s ever met and a few she can’t even identify, all refuse to make eye contact and their hands wander towards triggers when Elle’s line of sight accidentally falls on them a nanosecond too long. For so many people in the corridor to exit the port into town, it’s quiet save for the thunderous footsteps. They push through the crowd, dodging the vendors peddling their crap goods, and emerge into the bright Batuu sun. 

 

Elle smiles at the sight, finally a temperate planet. There are towering trees on the outskirt of the town, where the spaceport is located and lush grass despite the well traveled path into the streets. It’s been a while since she’s been able to enjoy greenery like this. Elle’s house on Coruscant had a small garden but after spending her life on overly developed worlds, almost a month in a desert, and, the past two days they’ve been planetside, soaked, she is ecstatic about getting sun and fresh, cool air. Her dad took her to Yavin 4, his home world, a few times and she always loved exploring the forests. He had smiled at her when she had gotten lost the first time and told her that she’s just like her mother for it, fascinated by trees. It was one of the few times Poe had brought up Elle’s mother unprompted. 

 

Now that her father’s gone, so is the last memories of her mother, Elle supposes. Not even Leia had met Elle’s mother. The dull discomfort that Elle’s always felt in regards to her mother transforms and deepens the throbbing loss that’s been her constant companion since Taros.

 

Weaving through the narrow streets, Ben leads her to stall after stall in the open market at the heart of the city. They spend only a minute at each before Ben discerns that they do not have what they need. Elle is calculating how to ask if they know where they could buy Force suppression cuffs in her broken Bocce, tired of Ben’s unpredictable wandering and quick dismissal of each vendor as useless, when Ben freezes. Elle wishes it was good news for their search but his hands hover over a snazzy grenade bandolier with quick releases she’s never seen before.

“Where did you get this?” Ben demands in basic of the protocol droid charged with the stall.

 

“All our suppliers are confidential and as a rule, we do not give out information of suppliers or buyers. This is for your safety.” The clunky droid rattles off. “Can I help you with anything else?”

 

“Five hundred credits for it if you can tell me what planet it’s from.” Ben goes, bartering away their hard earned credits. The identity of Silus had been verified and the credit transfer with the remaining 470,000 credits went through right before Elle landed, so she’s not as irate as she would’ve been if it hadn’t. Five hundred credits is fuel money for months or rent for a two bedroom flat in a decent neighborhood on Coruscant, not a weapon accessory. She doesn’t think they have any grenades. 

 

The droid takes choppy steps to them and says in a quieter volume, “I can disclose that this piece is locally made, sir.”

 

Ben sticks his hand out and Elle presses her credit stick into it. “You’re credit scanner encrypted?”

 

“Of course, sir! Finest encryption software credits can buy!”

 

Ben makes the purchase, hands the credit stick back to her and grabs their purchase. Elle is still confused. She is even more so as Ben walks with a purpose back to the spaceport but she follows him. He hasn’t steered her wrong yet on her revenge mission, after all.

 

They make their way back to the  _ Faclon _ , Ben taking such large steps that Elle almost jogs to keep up. Once back in the common room of the ship, Ben flicks the bandouliere at her. 

 

She catches it easily and she asks, “Why the fuck did you spend five hundred credits on this? It was labeled at fifty.”

 

“See those releases?” Ben nods at it, his smirk returned.

 

“Sure. They’re cool but they’re for grenades. Of which we don’t have?”

 

“They’re a special mechanism that Balt Ren invented when we were with the First Order. He got offers for the schematics but he refused to sell. Generals tried to get Snoke to order him to hand it over but not even that worked. It’s his work. It has to be.” Ben finishes, obviously excited as he can get with a slight tap of his boot.

 

“If it is Balt Ren’s work, how do we find him? Hack that droid in the middle of the night?” Elle questions, knowing it’s an insane idea.

 

“No.”

 

“Then what?”

 

“Psychometry.” His smirk is almost a smile. At Elle’s dumbstruck face, he offers, “Didn’t you want to learn everything about the Force?”

 

“What is it?”

 

“Using the Force to pick up information an object touched or where it’s from.” Ben says like it’s a casual thing. “Good for bounty hunting. And if Balt is still on Batuu, we can be halfway to an outpost within a day cycle.”

 

“Okay,” Elle drawls, not buying it. “So what do I do?”

  
  
  


______

  
  
  


It takes Ben a few hours to just teach Elle how to meditate, her Jedi friend taught her the nasty habit of channeling the Force only as a means to an end. Maybe he should’ve started  her Force training on Tatooine but he took his own training for granted. Combatives were his forte but only became so after years of strengthening his connection to the Force and mastering the basics.  It was a mistake to teach her ass-backwards.

 

Ben might still be walled off from the Force but he doesn’t need to be tapped in with the way Elle opened her eyes every few minutes, expecting that it would happen immediately means she doesn’t know how to properly meditate. She wasn’t even holding the bandolier. 

 

It takes some time, which displeases his impatient student immensely. She should be thankful that they have a lead so easily obtained and they aren’t rummaging through the seediest catinas in the Galaxy looking for skin slavers to find their next clue. They have a Knight of Ren within their grasp by the will of the Force instead of chasing shadows. 

 

Elle eventually gets it, after two meal breaks and hours of meditation. Ben hides his surprise and the fact he’s impressed. He had no expectation for it to work for at least a few days and failing that, they could shake down some more stall vendors for information. But he set a high standard as motivation, knowing she’d be eager to prove herself, and the kid is more determined to complete the task than all of his peers at Skywalker’s Temple were determined to do anything.

 

Her vision gives her two landmarks, a ridgeline on both sides of a valley with a river running between and a large house with two smaller structures flanking it. Elle relays this information to him along with a description of the creator but it’s too vague for Ben to confirm or deny if its him. 

 

They both race on their holopads, scouring maps of Batuu for similar terrain. Elle finds it after he proposes a couple of near matches, thousands of clicks to the west. It’s good news because it’s dusk in Black Spire Outpost and they don’t want to confront Balt Ren on his home turf in the dark, not with his sadistic traps and wiles. Balt, his given name was Gared, has always been some brand of coward which is why he was so good at what he does, building weapons and blowing things up. Ben never understood why he needed so much firepower as a Force sensitive but Ben has always prefered shooting back to hiding behind cover and lobbing grenades.  

 

They don’t need to break atmo and make the trip in an hour. Balt’s home is a sprawling property in a clearing in the woods with a wooden fence surrounding the rustic house and two smaller buildings. It would be picturesque if it wasn’t for the Knights of Ren’s resident bomb maker and weaponsmith that occupied it and apparently runs a weapons factory out of it. Its isolation and size reminds Ben of his own compound on Tatooine, with his workshop and dormitories he never used except when Elle barged into his life. Ben lands in the middle of the property, less than twenty meters from the front door, reasoning that it’s such a bold choice that maybe Balt didn’t plan for it.

 

However, he does leave the shields up until they exit the ship. Not like the ship is going to help them while both of them are on foot.

 

When Ben goes to lower the ramp with Elle at his side, weapons ready, they are greeted by the sight of Balt Ren with a disarming smile. The Knight of Ren stands tall in simple clothes, his hair more grey than his former silvery blonde,and his dark complexion with the least amount of palor that Ben’s seen since their days at the Temple.

 

“Ben Solo, my old friend,” Balt Ren calls, not daunted by the weapons pointed at his chest. “Been a long time.”

 

Ben drops his blaster rifle from bracing against his shoulder but Elle looks like she’s ready to ditch the blaster pistol in favor of his saber.

 

“I guess you want to be called Gared now.” 

 

“You guess correct. Let the past die and all that.” Gared chuckles. “You did always like to say that.”

 

Ben grimaces, not wanting to be reminded of his infamous soliloquy that made its rounds on the holonet back in the day. Hux had released Rey and Ben’s confrontation with Snoke in full in order to punish him for daring to survive his coup. 

 

“You’re just being selective in your adherence.”

 

Gared’s smile molds into a smirk. “Funny as always, Ben. Would you and your friend like to put down those things and join me for tea?”

 

Ben considers their options briefly then gives a small nod to Elle who reciprocates it. He hopes the message conveyed is: do as he says but keep you hand on the lightsaber. Times like these make him regret walling himself off from the Force. He wouldn’t have to rely on a teenagers understanding of his vague body language and could assess the situation fully. But he doesn’t think he could handle it right now.

 

“Do you have anything Alderaanian?”

“Not this time, your highness.” The ends of Ben’s lips quirk up slightly and he knows this isn’t Balt Ren at all, he hasn’t been that man in years.

 

The former Master of the Knights of Ren walks down the ramp and clasps arms with their former grenadier. Elle follows closely, her blaster returned to its holster, and with a wary look. Gared smile widens and he roughly pats Ben on the back when they release. The slap surprises him.

 

“Gared, this is Elle Dameron. Elle, Gared Varik.” Ben introduces them

 

“Good to meet you, young Dameron.” Gared inclines his head. “Please, come inside, this posturing is scaring the children.”

 

“Children?” Elle blurts out, her face doing nothing to hide her suspicions. If Ben had been younger, he would have agreed. Children can be useful as shields or blackmail, and Gared is a master of defense. But twenty years in the desert taught him how to recognize emotion in someone’s eyes. And Gared’s eyes show genuine pleasure at their reunion, not the same breed of anger that Hevron displayed on Tatooine, and only slight hesitation, and not the hesitation that predates a betrayal. 

 

“Of course.” Ben says, slinging the weapon on his back. Gared guides them inside the large house, the door isn’t hydraulic or even metal just plain wood, and parks them in stained armchairs by the entryway. Elle eyes are on him, wanting him to tell her what to do, and Ben removes his rifle and props it against the wall, hoping she would get the message. 

 

Elle elbows him while he is fussing with his safety and removing the cartridge of ammunition. He looks up to find Elle pointing at the doorway that Gared had disappeared to moments earlier and there is a small Zabrak child poking their head out, staring at them. Elle gives a little wave and the child disappears. 

 

“You scared him off.” 

 

Elle gives him a dirty look, “It was your face that scared that poor youngling.”

 

Ben was preparing his retort when Gared returns with a wooden tray, crowded with a dented teapot and three mugs. Gared serves the two of them before pouring himself a cup and pulls up an uneven stool to join them.

 

“So, are you here to take me away?” Gared asks bluntly. 

 

Ben hesitates and Elle answers for them, “We’re hunting down the Knights of Ren.”

 

“Then what happens to you, Ben, hmm?” Gared sounds hurt. “You’ll get off scot free? Ignore the consequences of the brotherhood you formed? Just as you did at the end of the war?”

 

He bites the inside of his cheek, his shame for forgetting them when he defected still burns. “I’ll turn myself in after the rest of the Knights are apprehended.”

 

Gared considers this for a long moment, sipping on his tea. “I will go without a fight on one condition. There are children here, thirty-two children who will be destitute without me. When you collect my bounty, young Dameron, you will use it to get them visas to the Core and you’ll provide for their education and well-being until they reach the age of majority.”

 

“Why?” Elle asks immediately.

 

“There can be no state run orphanages when there is no state and Batuu has none. I took these children off of the street and some were brought to me by my business connections, knowing I would take them in. Some of them have disabilities and could do no trade but beg. I leave, half of them will starve within the year, the other half enslaved by the damned Olim Syndicate.” Gared says mournfully. 

 

“You aren’t apart of the Syndicate?” Elle follows up eagerly.

 

“I know who they are, our old brothers, and they invited me to join their venture years ago but I already found my place here.” Their host sighs and calls, “Out of the kitchen, Domeric.”

 

They hear a child scurrying away.

 

“The rest of the children are in the other building, Domeric is just extra nosy. Their little spy, softest steps but they don’t fully understand the Force.”

 

Ben clears his throat, trying to find the right words to say, “Could you tell us everything you know about the Syndicate? That’s our real target.”

 

Gared takes a deep breath, “In 45, Exar Ren summoned everyone on all the old channels, something we agreed to monitor when we parted as the Order disintegrated. We met at Mustafar at Vader’s old castle, where they wanted to establish their headquarters. Exar had been busy since the Galactic Accords, subjugating Hutt bosses and starting his own crew. He wasn’t dreaming of wealth but restoration, not of the Order, of the Empire. Xenophobia and all. But Galactic conquest is pricey. They needed credits and Exar already starting to raise it. Slavery is lucrative, skin trade even more so, especially with total emancipation within the Republic. But, yes, I went and met with them though I already had a dozen or so wards and a successful, anonymous trade on Batuu. Exar gave me a mission, go to Kamino and negotiate terms for a potential army. I gave him my word and then ran. I destroyed all my communication systems and changed ships four times before I returned home. Haven’t heard from them since.”  

 

“Why did you run?” Ben is too busy processing to question him but Elle prods, obviously not satisfied. 

 

Gared squints at her, his age showing, “Dameron, eh? Your father was Poe Dameron? Then you already know what war actually costs.” Ben glances at Elle, her eyes dry but her fists are clenched around her thumbs, using the pressure point there to calm herself. “This one always thought me a coward but really, I just loathe fighting. I’m good at building weapons and armor because they’ve always fascinated me - how equipment can save a life. Wasn’t too fond of the other half of the battle.”

 

They sit in silence, drinking their cooling tea. 

 

“Being a Knight of Ren wasn’t a choice, Ben could tell you that, young Dameron.” Gared inspects the dent in the teapot for a moment and then starts again. “It’s not an honest choice if it’s death or compliance. The First Order nearly ripped my soul in shreds and Batuu put it back together.”He jerks his head towards the kitchen. “These unloved children put me back together. I’m not trading this away for a life of killing. But I won’t fight you either, as long as you’ll take care of them.” The dark skinned man stands abruptly, “You’re welcome to stay until you’ve decided. But if any harm comes to the children, not even the Cosmic Force can stay my hand.”

 

Gared retreats into the kitchen, leaving them shocked in his wake.

  
  


______

  
  
  


Elle watches Ben pace in the common area of the  _ Falcon _ from the bench. She’s fidgeting with the training remote that Ben found while hiding at the Republic Outpost, a little fighting droid that shoots harmless blasts to practice lightsaber moves. She’s only used it on the trip to Batuu while Ben was awake and could interpret the outdated controls and settings.

 

“You don’t want to take him in?” Elle asks, already knowing the answer and has known since tea two hours ago while Ben’s usual impassive face was wrought with emotion for his supposedly redeemed friend.

 

“He’s responsible for thirty children.” Ben grumbles. “He’s not apart of the Syndicate. If he was, he wouldn’t be able to keep them from us for this long. Exar isn’t a patient man and we did bring Silus in.”

 

“It doesn’t excuse everything he’s done in the First Order!” Elle nearly shouts, her blood already simmering to a slow boil. “He could single handedly stop the Olim Syndicate and it still wouldn’t be enough.”

 

“I’m not asking you to excuse it.” Ben grits through his teeth as he closes his eyes.

 

“Okay, be pedantic. What do you think knowingly abiding his freedom from justice should be called?”

 

Ben snorts, “Justice? What do you think the point of justice is?”

 

“Answering for your crimes.” Elle fires back quickly.

 

“Paying your debt to society?” Elle juts out her chin and reluctantly nods. “Isn’t that what he is doing? By running an orphanage on his own labor?”

 

“Letting him go unpunished surely isn’t justice.” Elle says stubbornly. “He’s a fucking Knight of Ren. There’s a reason the bounty is so high.”

 

“He isn’t associated with the Olim Syndicate. I thought this was about avenging your father’s death. Not take away the only father these children have. How is that justice? Your blind mission for revenge would leave those children alone, even if you did put them in boarding schools for them to grow up on an unfamiliar planet, alone because you sure won’t be able to find a school with room for for than a couple Wild Space orphans.”

 

Elle wants to continue to be mad, to rage at his completely fair accusation of this being about revenge not justice, but she can’t. She’s caught on the word orphan. 

 

With her father’s death, she’s an orphan.

 

But she has a dozen people she could call and she’d have a roof over her head as long as she needed. These younglings don’t have that or else they wouldn’t be living in the middle of a forest with a former war criminal. Or maybe they would, Elle’s on a galactic road trip with one. She also knows that even with all of her millions of credits, she’d never be able to take care of the thirty children the same way Gared has. Elle can’t raise them and separating them from the only family they’ve known is cruel. She should be ashamed for disregarding them so easily.

 

“Fine,” Her voice wavers. “But he’ll have to tell us everything he knows about the syndicate.”

 

Ben lets out a sigh of relief and gives her his first, albeit small, smile, not his smirk or grimace, but a real smile. “He can even make us the Force suppression cuffs. He’s the one who designed them for Snoke’s flagship.”

 

Elle shrugs, only partially listening as she’s distracted by his earlier words and her own orphan status. She fires up the training remote after a few tries and Ben excuses himself to speak with Gared. She engrosses herself with the task, refusing to dwell on anything but her breathing and blocking the bolts. What she now recognized as the Force, pushes and pulls within her. Her mind goes blank and she practices in peace for hours.

 

She was so focused that she missed Ben’s return to the ship and him bidding her goodnight. But after she’s had her fill of the old Jedi toy, she comes back to the conscious world less burdened and more energized. Elle does find Ben fast asleep in his quarters but cannot find the motivation to return to her own for the night. Not wanting to disturb him, Elle quietly disembarks from the ship and walks towards the house. She is about to knock when the is swung open by Gared.

 

Gared frowns for a fraction of a second, “I thought you were Ben.” The frown is gone as quickly as it came. “Hungry? I have some leftover curry from dinner.”

 

Elle politely refuses, “Sorry, I was just too pent up to sleep.”

 

Gared nods knowingly and motions at the chairs on the porch. They sit, the sun already disappeared behind the mountain ridge, and Gared flips a switch for the dim porch light. 

 

“You haven’t been formally trained.” Gared states. “Your signature keeps throwing me off. Earlier it was so tumultuous but now you’ve found your balance.” 

 

Elle looks at him hard, “Yours is calming. Like the ocean’s tide.”

 

“That’s what balance feels like.” Gared says simply. “Ben is cut off from the Force for his own reasons, so it’s impossible to track him. It’s why I was so surprised it was you. I had thought for a second it was him at the door and he’d reconsidered what I said.”

 

“How do I feel like him?” Elle asks.

 

“Your signature reminds me of a young Ben Solo while we were at Luke Skywalker’s Temple. Your turmoil is very familiar.”

 

Elle doesn’t know what to say about that. “Are you offended that I wanted to turn you in?”

 

“Not at all. I would deserve it, maybe even deserve the execution they’d probably give me. But they surely don’t. I’m thankful that you agree.”

 

Elle nods and Gared steers the conversation into the more comfortable territory of spacecraft and their new ventral cannon. They talk for a long time until sleep finally catched up with her and Elle returns to the  _ Falcon _ . Before she leaves, Gared gives her one last surprise in the form of a tight hug, the first bit of contact she’s had since her father’s funeral.

 

She smiles into it and bids goodnight then heads off for bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Psychometry](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Psychometry)  
>  Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Greetings! This is my first fic in ten years but also one of the last things I'm doing before law school, so do your worst comments section!
> 
> The majority of my Star Wars knowledge is from other fics, drunk reading Wookiepedia, and tumblr so if there's anything blatantly wrong, lemme know.
> 
> This is also unbeta'd so yolo.
> 
> I have a tumblr but the only OC on there is a photo I took of Kylo Ren grabbing Rey's face at a toy store like the touched starved virgin he is. You can heckle me here: http://noneforschiffy.tumblr.com/


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